Sentimental Education
by Demented Amanuensis
Summary: HGSSLM threesome! Ten years after the war, Ron dies playing Quidditch. Hermione, a high-ranking Law Enforcer, investigates her husband’s death, helped by Severus Snape and Lucius Malfoy. Professional cooperation leads to emotional entanglement.
1. Chapter 1

PROLOGUE - 1998

'Go and fetch Snape.'

'Snape, m-my Lord?'

'Snape. Now. I need him. There is a – service – I require from him. Go.'

Biting his lip to suppress a moan – his broken ribs still hadn't healed, and Bella had had a bit of fun with him before they left for Hogwarts – Lucius rose and dragged himself to the door. He had to open it with his left hand. Bella had stepped on his right wrist, and it felt like a mass of bone splinters. It probably was.

The night air felt cool and fresh on his face, but the sensation of relief was fleeting at best. He had no idea where Severus was, and he didn't have a wand to perform a Location Charm. If he didn't find Snape, Voldemort wasn't going to be pleased. Then, Voldemort would find _him_, and… Not that it mattered much. He was dead either way, whether they won the battle or the others did. They. Lucius chuckled to himself, then stopped abruptly because it made his ribs hurt even more.

He'd ceased considering himself a part of "they" some time ago. Too late, though, too late. He ought to have fled as soon as his foot touched the ground outside Azkaban. But Voldemort would have located him, without doubt; if the Dark Lord meant to find you, there was no such thing as sanctuary. Voldemort would have pursued and found him, punished him, and probably killed him. Or, if he'd been feeling particularly lenient, dragged him home, to imprison him in his own house. By choosing to go back there directly, after he'd been released from prison, Lucius had merely taken a shortcut.

In a fleeting vision Lucius saw the image of his life as it had been during the past three years. It looked like a maze. A labyrinth with only one entrance – by following Voldemort's call to the graveyard in Little Hangleton – he'd done so almost without hesitation because the Dark Mark suddenly flaring into pain had been such a shock, not a surprise, really, but he'd hoped against all hope that he'd been wrong… By obeying the Dark Lord's summons he'd stepped across the threshold; the door had sealed up seamlessly and irrevocably after he'd gone through, and could never again be found. And whichever path he chose, it led to the centre in which Death lurked. Before Azkaban, he had scarcely ever thought of Death. While he was in prison, he'd pictured Death looking like a Dementor, faceless, cold and reeking of dark decay. But that had become a distant memory; he couldn't imagine a Death now that didn't have a high, sibilant voice, red eyes and a snake he set at you when he'd decided that your time had come.

He sighed and winced at the stab of agony that pierced his whole body. After the agony of the mind and soul at Azkaban, he'd become accustomed to physical pain this last year. It had never been as bad as tonight though. Bella was an expert when it came to pain – Crucio was for torturing, but if the pain was to last and develop a life of its own, broken bones and crushed flesh and torn tendons were a lot more effective.

Lucius stumbled and almost fell. A wizard alone in the dark, without a wand to light his path. It was probably a metaphor for something, and if he didn't hurt so much, he might be able to find out. Swearing under his breath, he tried to pull himself upright. His ribs hurt less if he stood upright, but getting there needed all his willpower. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something stir in the shadows, guessing the movement rather than seeing it. Something blacker and more compact than the darkness; it didn't make a sound.

'Who's there?' Lucius called out softly, surprised at the hoarseness of his own voice. He must have screamed a lot. He didn't remember too well, not his own voice. Bella's shrieks of laughter had been all he heard.

'Lucius?'

He let out a sigh of relief. Not an enemy, then, or at least not an enemy from amongst Potter's followers. It might well be an enemy from Voldemort's ranks: there were many who'd hated him in secret and now saw no reason anymore to dissimulate their loathing. 'Yes,' he replied. 'Who are you?'

The dark shape emerged from the cover of a tree trunk. 'Are you wounded?'

Lucius snorted. 'In more than one sense, yes I am. Nothing lethal, though, for now.'

'I didn't think he'd take you to battle without a wand. Or has he given you a new one?'

'No, I'm still wandless. And I don't believe he intends me to fight. He just brought me along as his whipping boy, although right now, I'm being used as errand boy.'

'Errand boy? What does he want you to fetch?'

'You.'

A sudden gust of wind carried the sounds of fighting towards them. Then, a short silence; both men raised their heads to listen to the dull rumbling that followed; probably a turret or a section of the castle's wall had come down.

'Me?' Snape said after a while.

'He requires a service, or so he said.'

'That's what he's been doing since he branded me. Nothing more specific?'

'Not to me, no. He merely sent me to find you. He's in the Shrieking Shack.'

Snape nodded. 'I'll go then.' An alarm spell rising up into the night sky briefly made the two wizards visible to each other, their faces tinged with red, and Snape touched Lucius's shoulder. 'Draco?'

A shudder ran through Lucius. 'May be dead for all I know. I tried to persuade… him to stop the battle, but… He won't be manipulated, not anymore. Not by me.'

'I must go,' Snape said.

Lucius nodded. 'It seems you have no other choice. I wish-' He fell silent abruptly.

'Don't we all,' Snape said dryly. 'But this is no time for wishes.'

'Do you think we're going to come out of this alive?'

Snape shrugged. 'Somehow…' He exhaled and passed a hand over his eyes. 'It doesn't seem overly important just now. I just want it all to end, no matter how.' His voice, gritty and harsh, betrayed his exhaustion.

The dried blood at the corner of Lucius's mouth flaked off as he smiled. 'Will you tell me whose side you are on?'

'Are you saying you haven't figured it out? I really must be going now, Lucius.' He turned and walked away briskly, towards the noise and dust of the battle.

'I have,' Lucius muttered into the night. 'And that's why I'm pretty sure that you're walking towards your death, you imbecile. But' – he drew a deep breath with difficulty – 'I don't particularly want you to die.'

Trying to ignore the throbbing in his injured body, he followed Snape back to the Shrieking Shack.

'Blast those kids,' Lucius muttered. He'd almost run into Potter and his two friends – how they'd come to be there, he had no idea. Fortunately they'd made quite a racket as they clambered up through the trap door, and so he'd been able to slip back into his corner before any of them glimpsed him.

He watched the trio, silently willing them to leave before it was too late. The wounds in Severus's throat were gushing blood at an alarming rate. If the three lingered for much longer…

Then, finally, they were gone, and Lucius entered the room. He knelt down next to Snape's body and picked up the wand that had slipped from his lifeless hands. The rush of magic washing over him was exhilarating, but there was no time to be lost savouring the sensation. '_Sutureo_!' he pronounced, touching the bite wounds in turn. They closed, and Lucius smiled to himself. He'd half expected them to resist a simple healing spell, but then Voldemort had always been far too full of himself to bother with details. Such as, for example, the small but important fact that it took Nagini two days to produce an amount of venom sufficient to poison a wound beyond healing. His Lordship had made her execute the leader of the Hogsmeade squadron a few hours ago. The snake had evidently poured her whole supply of venom into him; there'd been nothing left for Severus.

He reached for the unconscious wizard's wrist, automatically using his right hand. The resulting jolt of pain nearly made him vomit. Wrist and hand had swollen to twice their size and were an ugly dark blue streaked with red. 'Bitch,' he muttered under his breath and pointed Snape's wand at the injured limb. It was a little awkward, because he wasn't used to doing spells holding the wand in his left hand, but flesh, bone and tendon knitted obediently back together, and the swelling was significantly reduced. Lucius breathed a sigh of relief and aimed at his ribs, now using his right hand, to set the broken bones. The rest would have to wait until later; for now he could cope.

'Very well,' he said to himself. He picked up Snape's limp arm and felt for a pulse. It was weak, but definitely there. 'Now let's see,' he said, patting down the other wizard's body, 'whether you've had the foresight… Ah. There they are.' He opened Snape's waistcoat – the man was nothing but skin and bones, he noticed fleetingly – and retrieved two bottles from an inner pocket. 'You could've labelled them, you moron,' he addressed Snape. 'Because' – he uncorked first one and then the other – 'I'm not sure if I can distinguish them by their smell. But I'm sure the antivenin wouldn't do you any good, seeing as there is no poison in your bloodstream. Now let me think…'

Lucius sat down on the dirty floor, holding the bottles close to his face. 'The blood replenishing potion must contain hibiscus and nettle, and therefore…' He smelled both bottles. 'There we are. A faint note of hibiscus, and a hint of redcurrant distillate. That has to be it.' He rose to his knees and cautiously lifted Snape's upper body, careful to support the head with his bicep so it didn't loll back. 'And now be a good boy, Severus, and swallow.'

The drops he let fall between the other wizard's parted lips were a faint pink. He counted ten of them, then carefully put the stopper back into the small bottle and waited. Nothing happened.

Lucius sighed. 'If you don't swallow soon, you stubborn idiot, it'll be too late. All right,' he said when Snape still hadn't swallowed five seconds later. 'All right, on your head be it. And if you drown in a glass of water that isn't even real, you'll have to blame yourself for it. Because' – he conjured a small beaker containing water – 'I can't very well pour the whole bottle of potion down your throat, unless I want your blood vessels to explode with the pressure. And I believe I've already made it sufficiently clear that I don't want you to die, you double-crossing traitor. I'll need every character witness I can get hold of.'

The sip of water he managed to transfer into Snape's mouth had the expected effect: part of it was swallowed, but some of it went down the wrong pipe and triggered a coughing fit.

'You ought to have waited,' Snape panted when he'd recovered his breath. 'It takes more time if you just let osmosis do the job, but it works. Through the mucous membranes,' he added, seeing Malfoy's frown.

'I would express my thanks for the improvised lesson in mediwizardry,' Lucius said snidely, 'but I think I'm going to leave that for later. Right now, I have to go and find my son. Can you walk on your own?' He reluctantly pressed the wand back into Snape's waiting hand.

'I think I can. How long have I been out? What happened…'

'He gave them one hour.' Lucius helped Snape sit up and slid back down to sit opposite him on the floor. 'Fifteen minutes have passed so far. He's playing with his prey, Severus, and that's never a good sign.'

'Did Potter take the memories?'

'He did, although he would probably have scooped them up with his bare hands, if that Granger girl hadn't conjured a flask. What did you give him?'

'Oh, this and that,' Snape replied with a thin smile. 'When Vol – when he set the snake at me, I was sure I had a decent chance to survive. Although I hadn't factored in Potter's appearance, or that it would take him quite that long to be gone. When they'd left, I was in no condition to reach the potions. If it hadn't been for you…'

'Behold Lucius Malfoy, the fearless knight in shining armour. So what the fuck _did_ you give him, Severus?'

'Look at it this way: If Potter's killed and His Lordship wins, I'll just have to run as far and as fast as I can. As will you. If, on the other hand, Potter wins, then, my dear friend, I'll need him as a witness, unless I want to spend the rest of my life in Azkaban, which is not what I intend to do. So I gave him what he needs to know, for both his and my sake. Looked at from a slightly skewed angle, it's almost a win-win situation.'

Lucius shrugged. 'It may be for you. I wish I could say the same for myself.'

'What? Lucius, you've been without a wand and under house arrest for almost a whole year. If that isn't enough of a ladder for you to climb out of the deepest of shit-holes, I'd be very surprised indeed. If Potter wins, that is.'

'You're convinced that he will, aren't you?'

'Let's say I have reason to believe he will.'

'I suppose it's something to do with that prophecy our Master wanted so badly… Anyway, considering that it's you saying this, it practically counts as unbridled optimism.' Lucius scrambled to his feet. 'Now I really have to leave. Good luck, Severus.'

Snape looked up at the other wizard, winced and gingerly touched his throat. The bites had healed well; there was an angry red welt on either side of his Adam's apple, but the skin had sealed up completely. 'Same to you, Lucius. You'll need it.'


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER ONE – TEN YEARS LATER

Hermione took a deep breath and braced herself. Once more she made sure that the number she'd hastily scribbled on a piece of parchment was identical to the one etched into the brass plaque on the door, and turned the knob.

The room was full of people talking in hushed voices; at the sound of the door opening everybody turned around. Harry, wild-eyed, hair sticking in all directions, got up so quickly that his chair fell to the floor with a loud clatter. His arms were around Hermione before she'd even had time to open her mouth. 'It was an accident, Hermione,' he muttered into her hair. She could feel his body tremble convulsively. 'It was an accident, there was nothing I could've done, I'm so sorry!'

While patting his back, Hermione tried to look at the others over Harry's shoulder. 'What happened?' she asked, looking at each of the frightened faces in turn. It had to be bad, for everybody was there: Molly, in tears; Arthur standing next to her with his hand on her shoulder and a look of desolation on his face; Percy, mouth compressed into a thin line and visibly fighting emotion; George, his face a mask of horrified foreboding; Bill and Fleur in a corner, talking to each other; Charlie with his face buried in his hands; Ginny, obviously torn between her own grief and her anxiety for Harry.

Harry loosened his grip on her. 'Didn't they tell you?'

'They told me that Ron had had an accident – not St. Mungo's, but the Aurors on duty. I'd had a few matters to see to at Azkaban and was just returning to the Ministry, so… Would somebody please tell me what happened to my husband?'

Molly raised her head. 'They were playing Quidditch…'

'Let Harry tell her, mum,' Ginny interrupted.

Hermione took a step back and grasped her friend's hand. 'What _did_ happen, Harry?'

'As Molly said, we were playing Quidditch…' He bit his lip. 'We'd had an early shift, and so I told him to come over to Godric's Hollow for a bite of lunch and a game. So Ginny made us lunch, nothing much, just a few sandwiches and a salad…' He fell silent, eyes brimming with tears.

'And then you played Quidditch, yes, I'd gathered as much,' Hermione said. It came out sharper than she'd intended, and she squeezed Harry's hand, meaning to reassure him. She'd never seen him look quite so forlorn.

'We… yes. We'd been playing for about twenty minutes, when Ron suddenly lost control of his broomstick, and… Oh, Hermione, there was nothing I could do – I was goalkeeper, we'd been taking turns, you know, swapping position after every goal, as we usually do. He just… he just crashed head first into that tree, he didn't even scream or anything. And his head…' Harry swallowed convulsively and covered his eyes with his free hand. 'His skull had split open, like a… like a…' He didn't finish his sentence but turned away abruptly and vanished into the adjacent bathroom.

'It was terrible,' Ginny said tonelessly. 'I've never seen anything like it – I was resting a bit, when I heard Harry call for me, and his voice was so… so horribly empty, so I knew something must have happened. We didn't dare move Ron or perform any spells, so we contacted St. Mungo's…' Her arms protectively folded over her pregnant belly, she stared at the bathroom door, as if willing it to become transparent and let her see Harry.

Hermione glanced over at the empty bed. 'Where is he?'

Arthur made a vague gesture indicating elsewhere. 'Still in the Healing Chamber – it's been two hours.'

She nodded and mechanically transfigured the coat rack standing in one corner into a chair. All available seats were occupied, and she felt she couldn't remain standing much longer. Sitting on the bed somehow didn't feel proper, rather like deciding that Ron didn't need it.

So this was it, Hermione thought. This was what you saw in films: the husband had had an accident, and somebody came to tell the wife about it. In films, the women either burst into hysterical laughter or into tears. Hermione didn't feel like doing either. She rather had the sensation of having been enclosed in a bubble – she briefly thought of Harry's description and memories of Voldemort's snake – which slightly distorted her optical and acoustic perception. All the faces around her looked like identical, expressionless white blotches; in vivid contrast, she was able clearly to hear, and listen to, all the ongoing conversations, like a complicated eight-part fugue for human voices. At the same time, a part of her brain was replaying Harry's words again and again, and another part was thinking that things weren't looking too good, not with Ron and his open skull for two hours in the Healing Chamber. So many words, all in her head. Hermione felt the pressure slowly building, suddenly afraid that her skull, too, might split open.

Then, suddenly, there was silence.

The door had opened again to admit a senior Healer. 'Mrs Weasley?' she said.

'Yes,' Hermione, Molly and Fleur answered in unison.

'Mrs Hermione Weasley,' the Healer specified. 'Is she here?'

Hermione felt obliged to rise from her chair, although the heaviness in her head and limbs was dragging her down. 'That's me, yes.'

'Could I have a word, please?' The Healer glanced briefly around the room and at the assembled family – nobody seemed willing to give them some privacy, so she gently took Hermione's arm and steered the young witch out into the corridor. 'Are you quite all right, Mrs Weasley? You look terribly pale.'

Hermione had to clear her throat a few times. Her tongue seemed stuck to her palate. Finally she was able to speak. 'I think I'd like a cup of tea.'

'Right you are. Let's go to the Senior Healers' room – it's against regulations, but the cafeteria doesn't afford much privacy.'

They went a few yards down the corridor, and the Healer preceded Hermione into a large, cosy room with a kitchenette, bookshelves and an assortment of mismatched armchairs and coffee tables. Healers' robes, shoes, magazines and lunch boxes were littering most of the horizontal surfaces. Except for the colour of the robes, it reminded Hermione a lot of the Junior Law Enforcers' Common Room at the Ministry.

'Sit down, please,' the Healer said, 'I'll just get the tea, and then we can talk.'

In this atmosphere of relaxed professionalism – she could almost hear the jokes flying back and forth, cases being discussed and shifts being bartered – Hermione didn't really want to talk about anything. She wanted to sit and drink her tea; everything else somehow didn't seem important right now.

The Healer, who'd taken the chair opposite hers, couldn't afford to lose time though. 'Mrs Weasley,' she said, transferring her tea cup into her left hand and holding the right out for Hermione to shake, 'I'm sorry I didn't introduce myself. Senior Healer Ada Wormcobbler. I'm in charge of your husband.'

Hermione shook the proffered hand, leaned back and took a sip of tea. The bubble was beginning to dissolve. 'They told me it was a broom accident.'

'Yes, that was the information his sister and brother-in-law gave us, too.'

The two women's eyes met. 'You don't seem to be overawed by having to treat Ronald Weasley, who was brought in by Harry Potter,' Hermione said smiling.

Healer Wormcobbler returned the smile. 'No. I tend to concentrate on the body, not the name. The awe might come later.' She shoved a few magazines off the coffee table and put down her teacup. 'Hermione – may I call you Hermione?'

Trying to repress a growing sense of dread, Hermione nodded.

'Hermione, you are an experienced law enforcer, so I trust you're able to keep your calm in a crisis. First, I want you to understand what happened to your husband. He hit a tree, head first, and he was flying at about forty miles per hour, to judge from the, erm, damage. I also want you to know that there was nothing Mr Potter or his wife could've done – they did, in fact, the only sensible thing, which was not to touch him and call us in immediately.'

'Forty miles,' Hermione said slowly, 'that must have…' She swallowed. 'There can't have been much left of, of anything.' Bile was rising in her throat, and she washed it down with a gulp of tea.

'We've been quite successful with cases worse than that. The problem was… There must've been a branch, some kind of short but pointed stump, probably the rest of it had broken off… It went right through his brain and completely destroyed the brain stem. Believe me, we tried, but there was nothing we could do.'

'So he's dead?'

'Yes. We lost him. I'm very, very sorry, Hermione. There aren't many cases that defeat our skills, but this was one of them.'

Hermione nodded. 'They said he lost control of his broomstick.'

'Yes. I know. In my opinion, although I won't be able to verify the theory, your husband suffered a small stroke, which led to a temporary loss of sight or orientation. We checked his heart, too, but it was healthy. A stroke is a definite possibility, though, even in one so young, but…'

'You wouldn't be able to locate a small haemorrhage in that mess.'

'Yes. Exactly. Hermione, would you like to inform the family yourself, or would you prefer to stay here while I go and break the news to them?'

'I think I'd rather stay here. If you don't mind, that is. I don't feel up to witnessing anybody's grief right now.'

'Stay here for as long as you need.' The Healer got up, squeezed Hermione's shoulder and left the room.

Ron was dead. She probably ought to have asked whether she could see him, but truth be told, she didn't want to. From what Harry, Ginny and the Healer had told her, she had formed a sufficiently accurate image, and it was bad enough to have it in her mind. She didn't need the real one, because she didn't want it to stay with her, as she was sure it would.

Hermione waited for the tears to come, but what came instead was guilt. Theirs had never been a fairy-tale marriage; it might have seemed like one at first, although mostly to others... All too soon, though, the cracks of too many unbridgeable differences had appeared through the thin coat of varnish of their school days and adventures they'd shared. Protecting Harry and getting rid of Voldemort had been their common goal, and after the war was over, they'd been tied together by the desire for a normal life. But once they'd obtained that, their personalities had turned out to be too opposed and their goals too divergent for their relationship to become anything but a battlefield. Ron had always claimed that children would help, but Hermione had categorically refused, sure that, if they were unable to see eye to eye when it came to making the simplest decisions, something as important as bringing up a child would only deepen the chasm.

In the end, they'd decided to get a divorce – ironic, wasn't it, that they'd been united again in their wish for separation – but hadn't told anybody as of yet. A few hours ago, over breakfast, they'd been quarrelling again, because Ron had wanted to prepare his mother, whereas Hermione had meant to present it to her as a fait accompli. Harsh, hateful words had been said, by both of them, all the old rancour and frustration had poured out…

Ron's outburst of anger had hurt her deeply, but nonetheless she wished she could at least take back her own words. But that was impossible. She would have to live with the memory of their last row. It was bad enough as it was. She really didn't need the image of Ron's crushed skull as a gory basso continuo underscoring the last words she'd ever spoken to her husband.

When she heard footsteps coming down the corridor, Hermione closed her eyes. She didn't especially like Molly, but she'd do her one favour: She was going to play the grief-struck widow to the hilt. And for Harry. Yes, she could do it for Harry.


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER TWO – SAME DAY, ON THE ISLAND OF AZKABAN

The collar of his heavy cloak turned up against the bitingly cold wind and rain, Severus Snape stood on the bottom step of the stairs leading up to the entrance door of the Prison of Azkaban.

It was late October, a few days before Halloween; this far up North, daylight was already fading at three in the afternoon and giving way to a dirty grey dusk that suffocated what little colour there had been under a wet, greasy film. Soon everything was grey, in subtly different shades, but nothing like the understated beauty of a winter landscape with its infinite variations of grey, brown and white. These greys were like different deaths, none of them more desirable than the other, because in the end, they all meant annihilation.

Severus shuddered. He'd spent a few months here, back when there were still Dementors guarding the wizarding prison after Voldemort's first defeat. Almost thirty years ago. He wiped the raindrops off his face with a shaking hand. The second time over, he'd been luckier, for they'd merely put him in one of the Ministry's holding cells – by no means a pleasant environment, but nothing compared to Azkaban. Even without Dementors, he was hardly able to imagine how Lucius could have survived ten years of imprisonment in this hostile climate.

He'd meant to visit Lucius, although the thought of the cells and their smell and of the changes this environment must have wrought on Lucius had almost been enough to deter him; he'd asked permission, but his petitions had always been rejected by the Ministry. So he had written letters, but they'd come back unopened – after he'd sent the third one, he'd been visited by a stern Law Enforcement official who informed him that Lucius Malfoy wasn't allowed visits, letters or parcels from anyone, and would Mr Snape kindly cease his attempts to communicate. The Ministry's budget was small enough, even without continuous expenses for post owls carrying unwanted missives back to the sender.

Ten years… Well, probably Lucius had been allowed to receive and sign the divorce papers. Narcissa had filed the divorce five years after her husband had gone to jail, so as to be free to marry another man, a foreigner Severus hadn't bothered to meet.

Severus had been invited to the wedding but had declined. He could understand Narcissa's motives and her desire to leave a country where her dreams of prestige and greatness had died, as had her sister. Being able to understand her reasons, however, didn't mean he had to stand by and witness her breach of loyalty to a husband whose beliefs she'd shared to a certain degree. Narcissa had been a Death Eater, too, as had Draco, but in court they'd successfully claimed that Lucius had forced them to follow his path. So Lucius had gone to prison, and his wife and son had got away with a minimal fine.

Severus knew for a fact that Lucius had never forced Narcissa to take the Dark Mark. That had been her own idea, because she didn't want to be sneered at by her sister. No the purest of motives, really, but then Voldemort hadn't been overly picky, not in the beginning, when he'd believed even the most ridiculously transparent lies, provided they contained a sufficient amount of flattery.

And Draco… Draco had had a choice. But he'd idolized his father and been eager to follow in his footsteps – or rather what the boy had imagined were his father's footsteps. The two hadn't known each other all that well. Lucius had been livid, both with anger and with fear, when he'd been released from Azkaban, only to discover that his son had taken the Dark Mark. The boy had had a fair chance, he could've run, and the Order would have had the means to protect him, but he had chosen to stay.

The dull creak of the entrance door opening reverberated through the stone and jerked Severus from his contemplation of the past. He pulled himself together and looked up at the gaping darkness, from which a black shape was now emerging. Unsure whether it was Lucius – the figure's head was covered by a hood, and it was almost completely dark by now – he climbed a few steps.

'Lucius?' he said, eerily reminded of their last encounter.

'Severus.' It wasn't a question but a statement.

'I thought you'd like to be met by a friend.'

'I greatly appreciate it, Severus.'

They met halfway up the stairs and shook hands. Years of practice at controlling his emotions and facial expression helped Severus to maintain his façade of friendly concern. Otherwise he would probably have wept: for Lucius, for himself, for many things he couldn't have named but knew they had lost.

As things were, he said, 'I suppose you'd like to go home.'

'Do I still have a home?'

'I took the liberty to look after the Manor in your absence. And the goblins' dislike of the Ministry has been protecting your secret accounts. You still have a home, Lucius, and you're still a rich man. We'll arrive in time for afternoon tea, if you want me to come with you, that is.'

'I've had rather enough of isolation,' Lucius replied with a hint of a smile. 'I'm so.. starved for conversation that I'd even talk to the House Elves, but I'd much rather talk to you. How have you been?'

'Tolerably well. Still brewing potions, of course, because that's really what I do best, but I don't have to teach anymore, thank heavens. I have my own company now, nothing big, just me and three apprentices, and we mostly develop new potions and sell the patents to the highest bidder. We also produce some of the more specialized brews for St. Mungo's. It makes for a very comfortable life.'

'Are you married?'

Severus, who was rummaging in his pockets for the Portkey, raised his head and frowned at the other wizard. 'No, of course not.'

'I rather liked being married,' Lucius observed in a curiously detached, almost dreamy tone Severus had never heard him use.

Since he couldn't think of a suitable answer to that remark, Severus just activated the Portkey and made sure Lucius's fingers were touching it. He was grateful for the rush of air and space that followed, for otherwise he would've had to avert his eyes from the skeletal hands.


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER THREE – A WEEK LATER, AT MALFOY MANOR

'You're looking much better,' Severus said, while taking off his cloak and handing it to a waiting House Elf.

'All due to good food in sufficient quantity, baths and regular exercise. And of course your astonishing strengthening potion. Not being beaten up once a week might also have helped,' Lucius said. He was aiming for lightness but didn't quite succeed. It was all still too recent, his return to a life as he had known it for over forty years still too dreamlike and fragile. He was afraid of going to sleep, for fear of waking up in his cell. Not that he intended to tell Severus that, but he rather thought Severus might have guessed, to judge by the look he gave him. 'Thanks for keeping all those newspapers,' he continued, eager to steer the conversation away from himself.

'I wasn't sure whether it was a good idea,' Severus said. They were walking towards the library – pre-dinner drinks in the library had been a ritual ever since his first visit at the Manor. 'In the end, I decided to keep the ones containing the most important news, because I thought you'd rather enjoy catching up, in spite of being reminded of how much you'd missed.'

Lucius opened the door and gestured at the other wizard to precede him. 'After you. Well, I didn't believe the world had been standing still since I went to prison, so I was rather glad to read up on events. Weasley kicked the bucket,' he added.

'Yes, it happened the day you were released.'

'Indeed. His wife had come to see me at Azkaban – the former Miss Granger, wasn't that her maiden name? The one Bella tortured… She's made quite a career for herself, or so it seems.'

'She'll be the next head of the Law Enforcement department, or so they say. You probably ought to feel honoured or something.'

Decanter in hand, Lucius smirked at him. 'To tell you the truth, I felt rather pissed-off. Little Miss prim-and-proper informing me about the terms of my parole, impressing on me the need to report back to her every ten days… Not on Saturdays and Sundays of course,' he said, mimicking Hermione's stern tones so accurately that Severus laughed out loud, 'So, if the tenth day falls on a Saturday, you'll come to see me on the twelfth day, and accordingly on the eleventh day, if the tenth day happens to be a Sunday.'

'She hasn't changed much since Hogwarts,' Severus said, taking his glass from Lucius with a nod of appreciation. 'Not in that respect, that is. She always had a rather, let us say casuistic, mind.'

'That's a very nice way of putting it. I did ask her, of course, whether I had to visit on the eighth day after a twelfth day, or on the tenth day after a twelfth day, and what to do at Christmas.'

'I suppose she didn't quite catch the underlying sarcasm.'

'Gryffindors seldom do.' Lucius took a deep gulp of whisky and sat down. 'Anyway, I'm glad her husband rode off to meet his maker before I was out, or she would probably have blamed it on me.'

'You were luckier than you know. They've examined the broomstick – somebody had tampered with it.'

Lucius stared into the fireplace, where a huge fire had been lit by the House Elves. 'Really? Who'd want to kill that moron?'

'It wasn't his broomstick. It was Potter's, he'd just borrowed it.'

Lucius gave a low whistle. 'Which explains,' he said pensively, 'why this bit of information didn't make it into the papers. How come you know, Severus? I didn't expect you to have such good contacts at the Ministry.'

'Granger told me, Mrs Weasley I should say.'

'The grieving widow herself? Why?'

'We'd worked together on a couple of her cases – she needed an expertise on potions and naturally turned to me.'

'Naturally.' The glint in Lucius's eyes was unmistakeable.

'Well yes, of course. I'd been her Potions teacher, so I probably was the logical person to turn to.'

'And that was reason enough for her to tell you somebody had manipulated Potter's broomstick.'

'That, and the fact that we've become… Friends would be a bit much, I guess, but close acquaintances over the years. A few days ago, she asked me to brew her a special calming potion – something that would enable her to work without making her dizzy or tired.'

'Potter's broomstick,' Lucius murmured. 'I thought that the Saviour of the Wizarding World was universally loved.'

'Nonsense, Lucius. Nobody is universally loved. Potter is an Auror, and quite a good one, much as I hate to say it. Naturally he has enemies. It could've been anyone – except for you, that is. You have a watertight alibi.'

'And you are friends with the Granger girl,' Lucius stated.

'She's hardly a girl anymore, Lucius.'

'But still quite young. And attractive, I might add, if one is partial to that particular brand of uptight propriety.' Lucius put down his empty glass and stretched, voluptuously, like a cat. 'Life, my dear friend, begins to look more interesting by the second.'

'I'd hoped you would, well, find life interesting, if maybe not for that particular reason.'

Lucius put his empty glass back on the table and got up. 'Let's have dinner, I'm famished. What do you mean you hoped – you didn't think I was going to kill myself, did you?'

'No.' Severus glanced sideways at his friend, trying to guess what went on behind that seemingly serene exterior. 'But there are worse things than dying, as you well know. I wouldn't have wanted you to…' He shrugged. 'It's good to see you like this.'

'Severus, I must say I find all this altruism a trifle disquieting.'

They'd reached the dining room and sat down at a magnificently set table. Dinners en famille had never been conducted in quite such a sumptuous way, not that Severus could remember anyway. But then, Lucius had to catch up on a lot, which probably accounted for the display of luxury. 'Don't worry,' Severus said, while examining a particularly fine Sèvres salt-and-pepper set. He still wasn't used to seeing the tremor in Lucius's hands, which became obvious when he unfolded his napkin. It would pass, he supposed, and in the meantime it wouldn't do to notice it. 'I'm not going to start mollycoddling you or asking whether you want to talk about it. But you don't have too many friends right now, and I owe you.'

'You have changed a lot,' Lucius observed. He was trying to make it sound casual, but his envy was palpable. 'There is a… a lightness about you, which I've never seen, not even when you were a boy.'

'I never had it,' Severus replied gravely. He still wasn't looking at Lucius and pointedly dedicated his attention to his starter. Maybe Lucius was going to open up a bit, if he set an example. 'You see,' he said, raising his glass in a silent toast, 'up till Voldemort's end, I always had to struggle, and I always had to pretend. It was only afterwards, when everything was over, and I'd been acquitted, that I realized how much strength had gone into that constant struggling and playacting. I'm not saying it was easy the first years after the war, but suddenly the struggle was for myself, just for myself – I don't quite know how to express it. Before, I had to invest all my strength into keeping up a status quo, to run like mad, merely to stay where I was.'

'Like the Red Queen,' Lucius said pensively, catching Severus's eye.

'Very much like the Red Queen, yes. And then… There was movement, all of a sudden, and, well, maybe not success, but results. And I was free to be just myself, to let it all out – if I felt like screaming and raging and banging my head against the wall, I could do it. Not publicly of course, but at least in the privacy of my own house. At Hogwarts, and with the Dark Mark, I never had that freedom. And after the first couple of years, I was able to look beyond myself, get a life, even make friends.'

'Which brings us back to the recently widowed Mrs Weasley,' Lucius said with a smirk.

Severus glared at him. 'Why on earth are you so interested in her?'

'She's my parole officer, why do you think I'm interested in her?'

'Be careful, Lucius. One single misstep and you'll be back in Azkaban.'

Lucius flung his hair back over his shoulder. 'Yes, I know. There's absolutely no need to remind me of it.' A shadow passed over his face, but he shook it off. 'Let's talk of something more interesting than Azkaban. Tell me about your potions research.'


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FOUR – THREE DAYS LATER, AT THE MINISTRY FOR MAGIC

There still were a few doses left in the bottle of calming draught Severus had brewed for her. Hermione was keeping it in her handbag, but merely for reassurance. He'd promised her it wasn't addictive, and she believed him, but it wasn't addiction she feared. It was the thought of depending on anybody or anything but herself. Besides, the funeral was over, and so long as she didn't have to meet Harry or Arthur, she could cope. Molly Weasley's exaggerated shows of grief merely made her angry; George's hollowed-out resignation frightened her. Ginny seemed to have forgotten that her brother was dead, in her anxiety to fuss over Harry, and Hermione found that quite unnerving.

Arthur and Harry were a different matter, though. Their grief was silent and all-encompassing, too deep for her even to try to comprehend it. Their ridiculous attempts at dissimulating it were heartbreaking and made things even worse. And, worst of all, they wanted to share it with her, and she didn't have anything to share with them but an oppressive sense of emptiness, which she could hardly explain to them. After almost ten years of marriage, eight of which had been a steady descent towards more and more useless and therefore more and more hurtful altercations, which had left them both empty, hurting and full of resentment, she would've had to dig deep in order to get back to an incarnation of Ron whose death she could grieve over. She knew they'd once been friends. There was some vestigial memory of being in love, the kind of love that brought a smile to her face when she woke up next to him. Those feelings were dead, though, as dead as Ron, because they'd turned to dust between the grindstones of their arguments. If there was anything for Hermione to weep for, it was the way their love had soured into something very akin to hate. She'd only just begun to come to terms with it, when they'd acknowledged the facts and decided to get divorced.

It was almost a relief – although she couldn't say so to anybody but Severus – that her husband's death hadn't been an accident but attempted murder. Not that she'd told Harry about it. Harry had more than enough on his plate; he didn't need a side dish of guilt. Sooner or later he'd have to learn the truth, but not now. She was going to tell him the whole truth once she'd found the culprit. It would be easier for Harry, she imagined, to cope with the inevitable sense of guilt if he had somebody to blame. Except for himself, that is. She, however, had work to do, lots of work, and it wasn't a lie, so she didn't feel quite so guilty about avoiding the family by pleading a busy schedule. It gave her the perfect justification for seeing nobody and doing nothing but work, eat and sleep. It helped, too; the small bottle in her handbag, a talisman untouched for five days, was tangible proof.

Severus had of course understood. There was nothing, or almost nothing, she thought he wouldn't understand. He knew regret, and he knew guilt, and he knew the importance of freeing oneself of both. He'd gone through shame, remorse and misery, all the way, until he'd come out at the other end of the tunnel, free of his burdens and ready to live. They'd become friends, well, sort of – they never called each other friend, but Hermione thought of Severus as a friend, and she was sure he felt the same way about her. He was a cautious man, Severus Snape, careful not to jinx what he had by bragging about it, not even to himself. But they were friends, and for a year or so, Hermione had been thinking of him as even more than that. There had been moments… Neither of them had ever said a word, because she was married and he was guarded, but the spark had definitely been there. And who knew what the future might have in store for them.

Hermione tore herself from her thoughts with difficulty and directed her attention back at the file in front of her. Ron's death hadn't been an accident. He'd died instead of Harry – curious, wasn't it, the way life had of repeating and distorting its own patterns? At the end of their first school year, Ron had willingly sacrificed himself on the chessboard and lived. And now, when death, real death, had been waiting for Harry, death had got Ron instead. It hadn't been a conscious act on Ron's part, it hadn't been a sacrifice. But death was patient and didn't care much for motivation, or so it seemed.

Who was the culprit though? Given the sensitive nature of the case, the Minister had entrusted it to her after a few tactful questions about her feelings. Select Magical Law Enforcement officers, sworn to absolute secrecy, had swarmed out immediately and dragged in a number of witnesses for her to interview, but hitherto the outcome had been rather meagre. If she didn't come up with results sooner rather than later, the case would be devolved to the Aurors – there was Dark Magic involved after all; hadn't it been for the connection to Malfoy, whose release and subsequent observation were Law Enforcement's responsibility, the investigation would have been assigned to the Aurors right away. She mustn't lose it, because Harry mustn't find out that way…

'Mrs Weasley?' Her assistant stuck her head through the half-open door. 'I'm sorry to disturb you, but Mr Malfoy is here.'

The fact that she'd seen Malfoy exactly one hour before she'd been called to St. Mungo's did nothing to endear the man to her. Somehow he'd become linked to Ron's death in her mind, although he was the one person she could be sure hadn't done it. 'Show him in,' she said.

Traces of the prison smell were still clinging to him, she noticed as she shook his hand. It was difficult to get rid of. She wondered what it did to Severus – it always made her shudder, and she hadn't even been in that prison, not as a prisoner anyway.

'My condolences, Mrs Weasley,' Malfoy said. 'I was very sorry to hear about your husband's death.'

'I wouldn't go as far as believing that, Mr Malfoy, but I appreciate the effort. Please be seated.' She gave him a quick look-over; he did of course notice, although she'd hoped he wouldn't. 'You are looking much recovered already.'

'My cheeks look less hollow, yes. I had the teeth replaced first thing – the Azkaban guards certainly don't know a lot, but they do know that taking out a man's front teeth inevitably attracts attention.'

Hermione's eyes narrowed. 'Are you saying you were being physically abused? By the guards?'

'Yes, they seemed to enjoy that quite a lot. Not more than some of my fellow inmates, mind you, but certainly a lot. And they were in a better position to enjoy themselves. After all, we were only allowed one shower per month, which was the only possibility for prisoners to, erm, socialize. The guards certainly used their opportunities to the fullest – soap in a sock – nothing ever changes, does it?' He flicked his hair back over his shoulder.

'Who?' Hermione asked, reaching for parchment and quill to mask her utter horror. She'd heard similar stories, and sometimes been able to apprehend the perpetrators, who then had been sentenced to a few years in prison. Malfoy's studied indifference, however, somehow made it worse. A man shouldn't be able to talk about hell as if he were giving a vivid account of the last Quidditch match. 'I need their names.'

'Mrs Weasley, I appreciate the gesture but, just as you said, I won't go as far as actually believing it.'

'You're afraid.'

'Let us say that I have a lot to lose. Those people are criminals – the guards, I mean – and they have connections. Framing me would be so easy, they took great care to let me know, and believe me, I don't want to put their unsubtle allegations to the test.'

'But these people have to be identified and punished! Azkaban may be a prison, but the inmates have just as much right to be treated like human beings as every other citizen.'

'I seem to recall that you have always been something of an idealist, Madam. Draco told me that interesting anecdote about freeing House Elves – it was House Elves, wasn't it?'

'That's quite beside the point, Mr Malfoy. You refuse to give me the names of the people who mistreated you, and I respect your decision. Maybe you'd like to talk about it later, when you're not on parole anymore.'

'Maybe,' Lucius said, twirling his cane between thumb and middle finger. 'Which reminds me of asking you whether there is anything I could do, so you'd consider shortening the parole.'

She frowned at him. 'You know very well that this decision lies with the Wizengamot. Or maybe you don't, since these first attempts at a separation of powers were made rather shortly after your incarceration.'

'Oh, I do. I do. But submitting the request to the Wizengamot is definitely within your power, Mrs Weasley.'

'It is, you're right on that count. Only in your case, Mr Malfoy… I really don't quite see why I'd want to submit such a request.'

'Your husband's death is suspect, or so I hear.'

'Has Severus been talking?'

Lucius smiled. 'You mustn't be cross with him. He didn't mean to.'

'Were you having a Veritaserum party?'

Now he laughed. 'No. No, I'd read about Mr Weasley's demise in the _Prophet_ and made a remark about being quite the lucky fellow – having an alibi and all that, because otherwise you'd certainly have tried to pin it on me in spite of it being an accident, and he told me that it wasn't.'

Anger and something of the old hatred flared up within her at his insouciant tone. But then she thought of Azkaban, and of a piece of soap in a sock, and swallowed her irritation. Not only had he never liked the Weasleys, the nonchalance was nothing but a disguise, and not a very good one at that. Apart from being traumatized, the man was also afraid; he'd indirectly admitted it. 'Then let me tell you, Mr Malfoy, that you're even luckier than you thought. We tested the magical signature of the curse that had been put on the broomstick. The results just came in.'

Malfoy leaned forward, suddenly genuinely interested. 'That must be a recent development. I've never heard of such a thing as a magical signature.'

'It is indeed. And a lot more efficient than Priori Incantatem, since only very few criminals are so helpful as to leave their wands behind. Now they don't have to. The magical signature of a spell or curse tells us all about the age of the wand and the materials it's made of, which narrows it down pretty much. But it also tells us whether the wand was being used by its rightful owner. Framing people has become more difficult.'

'Unless, of course, it's possible to fake a magical signature. But to return to my incredible luck: What did the signature tell you about the perpetrator?'

'It was your wand, Mr Malfoy.' She had the satisfaction of seeing the mask slip for an instant.

'My wand,' he echoed tonelessly, his right hand straying to his left sleeve. 'But that's… No, not impossible, evidently, but…' Their eyes met, and he nodded slowly. 'Of course. A simple plan, but not bad, come to think of it. Only the timing seems to have been less than perfect.'

'It would have been perfect, if Harry hadn't swapped shifts – a kind of last-minute transaction with a colleague who'd caught a virus and needed to go home. So, even if the murderer had some inside information, he couldn't have known. What he, or she as the case may be, knew exactly, however, was when you were to be released, but that was common knowledge. It was even in the _Daily Prophet_. He was also aware that Harry would have played in the Aurors versus Guild of Merchants game the next day, which was a charity event and therefore also well publicized. So the accident would've happened in front of a few hundred witnesses. Whoever the murderer was, he hadn't taken into consideration that somebody else might be using Harry's broom before the game, so I suppose he didn't know Harry too well – he always lets... used to let Ron ride his broom, it was something of a private joke going back to our Hogwarts years. I shouldn't be telling you this,' she said, frowning at Malfoy.

'I'm not so sure. You're searching for a person who hates Potter as much as he hates me, and you'd have needed to talk to me anyway.'

'I'd hardly say he hates you both equally. Harry would've died, you would merely have gone to – well yes. Back to Azkaban after a few days of freedom, and probably for life, that's pretty bad.'

'I would certainly think so. Two birds with one stone…' Lucius rubbed the bridge of his nose. 'But didn't you say that the magical signature shows whether the wand was being used by its owner?'

'Yes. That's what makes it so interesting.'

'In a rather morbid sense of the word, as far as I'm concerned. So I presume it said that I was using my own wand?'

'It certainly did. I told you you were lucky.'

Lucius put his right hand over his left that was resting on the cane's head to dissimulate their trembling. 'So it's possible to fake a magical signature?'

Hermione shook her head. 'Impossible.'

'Polyjuice, then? Would it fool the test?'

'Excellent reasoning, Mr Malfoy. Yes, it would. We tried it out. I would thank you not to make this knowledge public, though. In your own interest.'

'I am not a fool, Mrs Weasley. But whoever it was, he needed some of my hair. Are all the prisoners forbidden to communicate with the world outside? Or was that my special privilege?'

'Only high security prisoners. High-ranking collaborators and prominent Death Eaters, like you. But their friends and family are being kept under close surveillance, as is their correspondence. If anybody had received a bit of hair, we'd know. As things are, none of them could possibly have done it. Besides, I don't think the person we're looking for is a Death Eater. This crime has a different feel to it.'

'I'm sure you know best,' Lucius said politely.

'I hope I do. And now, Mr Malfoy, I'd be very grateful for a list of persons who hate you.'

Lucius glanced at his pocket watch. 'I assume you don't have any appointments for the rest of the day, Madam?'

That made her laugh, in spite of herself.


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER FIVE – TWO WEEKS LATER, AT SEVERUS SNAPE'S HOUSE

'I know I've never come to visit you here,' Hermione said, standing on Severus's doorstep, suddenly unsure whether this had been a good idea. She seldom acted on impulse, and she knew why.

Severus looked down at his… friend, yes, blast it, she was his friend – she wasn't Lily, and he wasn't fifteen anymore, so why was he so afraid of admitting to himself what she meant to him? 'Friends are always welcome. Come in, you're looking rather wild.'

Rising on tiptoes, Hermione gave him a peck on the cheek. 'That's the nicest thing I've heard in a long time. Thanks, Severus!' She stepped into the entrance room, and he closed the door behind them. 'As for looking wild… Severus, I'm at my wits' end. The Minister wants a quick result, and I can't say I blame him, because the Aurors want the case and are pestering him twice a day to take it away from me, but-'

'Hermione,' he interrupted her. 'It's only eight p.m., and we have all evening. Why don't you come in, I mean really in, and sit down, and I make us some tea, and then we talk?'

'I didn't want to intrude…' It sounded even less convincing when she said it out loud. She _did_ want to intrude, both because she wanted to spend time with Severus and to use him as sounding board. And he'd called her friend, for the first time since they'd formed their working relationship, and his presence had such a soothing effect on her. 'But I'd like that very much, thank you.'

He took her cloak, which he hung next to his own with great care and then pointed towards an open door to their right. 'That's the living room. I'll be with you in a minute.' Already at the kitchen door, he looked back. 'And yes, you may look at all the books.'

Hermione smiled after his retreating form and wandered into the room he'd indicated. It was unpretentious and cosy, and rather more cluttered than she would have expected Severus's home to be. This was, as a second look round made her realize, probably due to the books. There wasn't that much furniture, and next to no knick-knacks – she spotted a beautiful antique water pipe of probably North African origin and a very good watercolour of Hogwarts – but Severus clearly had a book problem. There were double rows in the bookshelves, piles on top of the bookshelves, books on the floor and books on a side table, which she thought was really nice and possibly Georgian. Only the coffee table and two chairs weren't covered in books; being a dyed-in-the-wool bibliophile herself, Hermione knew the necessity of keeping one table book-free. Spilling tea or coffee on one of one's precious treasures just wasn't done.

'I'm in the process of rearranging,' Severus said from behind her. 'Changing things always takes me very long, but I've finally decided to convert the second bedroom into a study. So now I have to separate the books according to whether they're more needed downstairs or upstairs. I'm afraid' – he put a tea tray down on the coffee table – 'that I'll never find anything again afterwards, which is of course the reason why it took me almost ten years to do it.'

'You don't have them catalogued, do you?' She sat down in one of the chairs.

'No, and now I'm paying the price for my negligence. On the other hand,' he said, pouring their tea, 'I've discovered quite a few things I wasn't aware I possessed. So there's a reward, too. Milk?'

'No, thanks. No sugar either. Do you have a laboratory here?'

'A small one, yes, down in the basement. But as you well know, brewing and books don't go together very well. And protective spells might interfere with my potions. Would you like something to eat, maybe?'

'A little later, please, if the offer still stands then. I'm too hungry to eat now, and too nervous.'

'All right. So drink your tea and tell me what's making you so nervous.'

Since Hermione couldn't very well tell him that a rather large part of her nervousness was due to him, she settled for laying out the case that had been occupying her mind for almost four weeks.

'Well, that certainly makes it a lot more complex,' Severus remarked when she'd told him about testing the magical signature of the curse and the probable use of Polyjuice. He refilled their cups. 'With hair like that, Lucius has always been very careful – one single hair left behind at a crime scene would've been just what the Aurors needed. Not to mention a string of other, more sinister possibilities, of which Polyjuice is the most harmless. He has been wearing a protective charm on his hair as long as I've known him, and certainly also before. If I were to venture an educated guess, I'd say he started as soon as his first year at Hogwarts.'

'You see,' Hermione said, beaming at him, 'that's exactly the sort of information I need. But he couldn't have renewed that charm at Azkaban. And I doubt whether the one he used would have lasted ten years.'

'So do I. We can safely assume that his hair wasn't protected at Azkaban, and probably not before he went to Hogwarts. The question is: who would've had the possibility to smuggle some of Lucius's hair out of Azkaban?'

'Lots of people. Guardians, fellow prisoners under less strict conditions, just to name a few. In a manner of speaking.'

'Hm.' Severus tapped his lips with his forefinger. 'You have made a list of course.'

'Yes, and believe me, it's not very helpful. Plenty of people who hate Malfoy, but none of them with a reason to kill Harry.'

'If Potter was meant to be the target.'

She frowned. 'What do you mean, if? His broom had been cursed, so he obviously was.'

'Maybe I ought to have expressed myself better: What if Potter wasn't the main target, but simply a means to an end? Killing, say, the owner of Needles & Pins wouldn't have provoked much of a scandal. Maybe it wouldn't even have led to Lucius returning to Azkaban – with no motive and purely circumstantial evidence, and with a good lawyer…'

'So that's what you… I see. We'd be looking for a very twisted person indeed.'

'Murderers often are,' Severus said calmly. 'And I'm not saying that Potter wasn't the main target, together with Lucius. But I think you ought to consider the possibility of Potter being nothing but a pawn to be sacrificed, so that Lucius couldn't use lack of motive as a valid defence strategy.'

Hermione passed a hand through her hair, freeing more curls from an already overexerted clip. 'But this makes it… Bugger!' she exclaimed, hitting her knee with a fist and wincing. 'This brings us back to square one, if not farther behind. It's possible to narrow down the group of suspects to a few individuals, if we postulate that the killer, or the person who instigated the crime, hated Harry as much as he did Malfoy. But with Malfoy as, so to speak, the sole target…'

Severus leaned back and observed his… friend, yes, friend with a smile. When Hermione had calmed down a bit, he asked, 'Have you had any luck so far with that small list of suspects you mentioned?'

'No,' she said gruffly. 'If you look at it from that angle, your theory is practically a godsend, because we were running out of suspects. As I said, the time window for putting the curse on the broom was extremely narrow. It's a widely known fact that Harry flies as often as he can, and never in the morning – everybody knows that in Godric's Hollow. He wasn't supposed to be home in the afternoon, but even if the murderer didn't know that, cursing the broom the night before the charity match was the safest option. And Malfoy's wand couldn't have been, erm, borrowed for very long either, because they perform checks every twelve hours at Azkaban.'

'So that whittles it down to twelve hours. And a very small group of people who could have stolen the wand.'

'Exactly. Between eight p.m. and eight a.m., that's when they do the routine check. And everybody, virtually everybody has an alibi. We gave them Veritaserum, we checked for memory spells – nothing.'

'Maybe,' Severus said slowly, 'You ought to go and see Lucius. He's, shall we say, quite an expert when it comes to twisted minds.'

'Takes one to know one, eh?'

'Well, yes. If he was indeed the main target, he might be able to come up with some very creative answers.'

'I see. If you think it's a good idea… Look, Severus, I'm going to be frank: I know that you're in a very difficult position here. You're Malfoy's friend, and he saved your life, but you're also my friend, and Malfoy and I aren't exactly on the same side. I don't really want to involve him, because he already dropped a hint about reducing his parole in exchange for unspecified favours he might do me. I can't say I like the idea. Besides he…he disturbs me. Unsettles me.'

Severus raised an eyebrow. 'Does he indeed? I wouldn't tell him that, if I were you. He just loves to ferret out people's weaknesses.'

'I'm afraid it would be quite obvious anyway. Which is one of the reasons why I don't really want to go to him.'

'Knowing what you know about him, you might use it to your advantage.'

She snorted. 'Really?'

'Oh, yes. Use your adversary's own weight against him, so to speak.'

'That wouldn't work. Not with Malfoy.'

'I think,' Severus said, 'that you might be overestimating him. He's not the Lucius Malfoy you knew. Not anymore. I wouldn't go as far as calling him a broken man, but he's certainly damaged.'

'Physically, yes, I agree. Otherwise – yes, probably, but he seems to be remarkably resilient.'

'Not as much as you think. Believe me, I know him. Have known him for almost forty years. That's why I would advise you not to put in a request to shorten his parole, even if he managed to convince you. He wouldn't be able to handle complete freedom, not right now. He needs time.'

'You really like that man, don't you?'

Severus shrugged. 'Yes, I do. We go back many years, we've been friends for most of that time… He never turned against Voldemort, because he'd never got his hands bloody – it's always the same with those aristocrats, they just never have to look down at the dirt and gore. And once he got involved in the dirty fighting, it was too late, unless he wanted to watch his wife and son die.'

'And then he saved your life.'

'And then he saved my life, instead of running off in search of Draco. He was taking quite a big risk – if Voldemort had won, and my body not been found…' He looked straight into Hermione's eyes for a while. 'It's complicated,' he finally said.

'It always is. Would you be willing to accompany me, if – when I go to see him?'

'Of course.'

'That's settled then. Severus, you did offer me something to eat, didn't you?'


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER SIX – TWO DAYS LATER, AT MALFOY MANOR

'Thanks for setting up the appointment,' Hermione said, as they met outside the entrance gate of Malfoy Manor. She was feeling more than a little awkward and hoped that Severus hadn't retreated into that shell of inapproachability he still sometimes used.

'Don't mention it,' he replied, a little stiffly.

He was looking a bit flustered, Hermione decided, but not in a way suggesting imminent rejection. She took a step towards him and reached for his hand, which he surrendered willingly. 'You aren't regretting that kiss, are you?' she asked. Her free hand came to rest on his chest, and he covered it with his fingers.

'No, I don't. I was a bit… anxious that you might, though.'

'I initiated it, why should I?'

'Well, it was late, and you were tired, and – and maybe you're not very stable right now, emotionally, I mean…' He gave her a hopeful look.

Hermione pulled herself up to her full height, which brought the top of her head to the level of Severus's throat. She fleetingly thought of conjuring a step ladder, so she could look down at him during the speech she meant to give, but dismissed the idea as rather ridiculous. 'Listen, Severus. I don't have many friends, and I would never, ever risk your friendship, which I happen to treasure a lot, because of a mere flight of fancy, or emotional instability, or whatever you seem to think. You're my friend, and I'd definitely like you to be more than that, and I can assure you that these feelings have got nothing to do with my recent loss. I've had those feelings for well over a year, only I didn't feel free to act on them. Now I am free. I won't lie to you – Ron's death was a shock, and it's going to take me some time to get over it completely, which is why I'd like to take things slowly. But I'd like us to have a relationship, there's no doubt about that.' She climbed off her imaginary step ladder, or rather soap box, and moved her hand from Severus's chest to his cheek. 'Is that understood?'

He smiled down at her. 'It was rather unmistakeable, I'd say.'

'But did you like it? I mean, you _do_ have a say in the matter, you know.'

'There's a lot I'd like to say to you, but this doesn't seem like the right time or place. But yes, I like it. A lot. Let's leave the rest for later, shall we?'

'Good enough for me,' Hermione said. A quick look round, and she rose on tiptoes to plant a sound kiss on his mouth. 'Now I'm feeling very bubbly and girly, which isn't the right mood to face Lucius Malfoy.'

'Look at it as diversionary tactics,' Severus said lightly, before turning towards the gate and touching it with his wand.

The ornate iron bars began to twist and twine around each other like a brood of snakes, and finally coalesced into a vaguely leonine head that opened its mouth and said something completely unintelligible.

Severus sighed. 'If I told him once, I told him a hundred times to put a translation spell on that door. Last time I came here, a Gorgon greeted me in Greek hexameters. I can't say that the Chinese Fireball is much of an improvement.' He touched his wand to the head, which was looking a bit puzzled, and pronounced, '_Translatio_! We've come to see Lucius – Hermione Weasley and Severus Snape, we have an appointment.'

'I know who you are,' the head said to Severus, who sidestepped the small flames that accompanied the words just in time. 'Who did you say was the lady?'

'Hermione Weasley,' Severus repeated.

'Hmm…' The head mustered Hermione, who had stepped up to stand next to Severus. 'I know you,' it finally said.

'You've got an excellent memory. I was here indeed, about ten years ago, although I, erm, didn't come here willingly.'

'I thought so,' said the head, 'If you'd come willingly, you wouldn't have been bound and gagged, for one. Besides I've never liked that Greyback fellow. Kicked me something vicious, he did, and more than once. In you go then, and have a nice stay. Nicer. Well you know what I mean.'

The gates swung open, and Severus and Hermione stepped through. 'I remember the peacocks,' she remarked, when a beautiful specimen took screeching flight as they approached it. 'They looked so ghostly in the night, but somehow comforting. I'd never seen albino peacocks before, so I took them as a good omen.'

'Considering it was Bella you were up against, they probably were. Not many escaped her alive.'

'Well, if it hadn't been for Dobby…' She stood still abruptly and glanced up at Severus. 'He still has House Elves, doesn't he?'

'Yes, but they're free now, and paid. I did that while he was in prison.'

'What did he say when he came back?'

'Not much. He merely grumbled a bit, which told me more about the state he was in than words might have.'

They'd reached the entrance door, which was opened by an elf wearing a uniform adorned with the Malfoy crest. 'Mr Malfoy is awaiting you in the library,' it said.

'Thank you, Dorky. We'll find our own way. Déjà-vu?' Severus asked, when Hermione moved closer to him and took his hand.

'A bit, yes, though less bad than I'd expected. I don't dream about it anymore, and besides I don't recognize much – has the house been redecorated, or something?'

'Narcissa made quite a few changes, yes, after everything was over. She used to live here on her own for almost five years, and I suppose there was a lot of things… memories she wanted to get rid of, too. Spending quality time with her sister hadn't exactly been a success. Sorry, I didn't mean to joke about her.'

'You know, sometimes one just has to make jokes – I don't mind, because I'm doing it myself, all the time. People who haven't lived through similar experiences don't understand it. But it does help.'

'You'll be getting on splendidly with Lucius. He does it too.'

'About Azkaban, or only about the people he's killed?'

Severus squeezed her hand. 'It may come as a surprise, but he hasn't actually killed anybody. As I said before, he never got his hands dirty. It's like modern warfare – if you don't have to actually sit in a trench and get shot at, all you see is neat little pictures of targets being hit and clouds of smoke.'

'That,' she said ferociously, 'doesn't excuse anything.'

'I didn't say it did. It merely helps to understand, if that's what you want.'

They had arrived at the library door, and Hermione traced the ornate carvings with her finger before looking up and into Severus's eyes. 'You do know me quite well, don't you? You know that I always want to understand, and you won't let me get away with anything less.'

He kissed the top of her head. 'It seems we complement each other nicely, yes.' He raised his hand to knock, but the door was opened before he'd even touched it. 'Lucius, how often do I have to tell you that eavesdropping isn't good manners?'

'I couldn't hear a thing,' Lucius replied, sounding entirely unapologetic and rather accusatory. 'If you're holding secret meetings on your host's doorstep, the least you could do is talk audibly. Mrs Weasley, delighted to meet you again.' He'd taken her hand and kissed it before she could pull it back. 'Come in, come in. You won't decline an invitation to afternoon tea, I trust?'

'Lucius is always having afternoon tea,' Severus explained, seeing Hermione's puzzled look. 'Whether it's three or six p.m., afternoon tea is always waiting.'

'Rather like the Mad Hatter,' Hermione observed.

'That has always been my favourite chapter,' Lucius said. 'With the notable difference that we won't have to change seats in order to find clean cups and plates. And the conversation is much more animated.'

'We won't be drawing muchnesses then?' Hermione asked, amused despite herself.

'I daresay we won't. But there might be treacle, if you ask nicely.'

Hermione's mouth was beginning to water. 'It's been ages since I last had treacle tart. The Hogwarts elves used to make it – you know, I'm almost sure I haven't had any since school?'

'Then feel free to have as much as you'd like, by all means.'

He gestured them over to a table that clearly didn't belong in the library, but had obviously been put there for the visitors' sake, as had the chairs. Next to this arrangement stood another, slightly smaller table bearing the teapot and various plates with an impressive selection of food.

Severus opened the topmost buttons of his frock coat. 'It's hot in here.'

The haunted look in Lucius's eyes was hard to miss.

Hermione knew all about the temperature in the cells of Azkaban. Since Malfoy hadn't yet given her any reason for other than polite behaviour, she said tactfully, 'Winter seems to be coming early this year. I quite like the contrast to the temperature outside – there's a nasty wind blowing today.'

After the tea had been poured, food selected and small talk about the weather exhausted, Severus glanced briefly at Hermione, who nodded. 'Lucius, I've advised Hermione to talk to you about the case she's currently investigating.'

'That would still be your late husband's demise?' Lucius inquired politely.

'Yes. I discussed it with Severus the other day, and he came up with a rather intriguing idea.'

'I see,' Lucius murmured, when she'd finished her narration. 'Yes, that's certainly an interesting angle. I had already' – he beckoned for the attending elf to float the sandwich platter towards him – 'been thinking along the same lines, more or less. Because – sandwich, Mrs Weasley? Ah, yes, the siren call of the treacle tart – Dorky, an extra large slice for the lady. I was wondering, wouldn't it be a little strange for one and the same person to hate me and Harry Potter?' He carefully selected a cucumber sandwich. 'Potter and I are so far apart, we move, and have always been moving, in different universes, so to speak – a connection would be very difficult to establish.'

'You think so?' Hermione cut a piece off her slice of treacle tart. 'You're looking at the problem through a socio-political filter, Mr Malfoy. From that point of view, what you said is quite true. Someone who hates you for your beliefs and the actions stemming from your beliefs wouldn't have much reason to hate Harry, and vice versa. Mmh, this is delicious!'

'But how many people are there,' Severus put in, 'who know both Potter and Lucius well enough, privately I mean, to want to kill the one and send the other to Azkaban for life?'

'Could it be a woman?' Hermione looked from one man to the other. 'Harry was quite, erm, wild for a couple of years after the war. Before he settled down with Ginny.'

'Unless he was seeing older women, I don't think so. My infidelities may be counted on the fingers of one hand, and I never had much time to waste with girls.'

'Not that I know.' Hermione ate a few bites of her tart, while doing a mental roll call of Harry's paramours during the years Harry wasn't allowed to mention at home unless he wanted to sleep on the couch.

Severus dabbed his lips with his napkin and leaned forward, both elbows propped on the edge of the table. 'As I see it, this crime hinges entirely on motive. You know how and when it was done. To find out who did it, you have to find out why. And it doesn't have to be politics or revenge, not necessarily. What about money? It could be the other way round, you know. Who would benefit from Potter's death and regard Lucius's return to Azkaban as a kind of collateral bonus?'

'Ginny. And she hates Mr Malfoy, but I'm sure she wouldn't have killed her own husband, whom she loves very much and whose child she's bearing, merely to inherit his money and dispatch Mr Malfoy back to Azkaban in one fell swoop. The money is hers anyway, and if she wanted to get even with you,' Hermione addressed Malfoy, 'she'd come here and Crucio you to death, and the consequences be damned. Besides, how would she have been able to get Mr Malfoy's wand?'

'A Weasley and a Gryffindor,' Lucius said. 'She's right, Severus. Ginevra Weasley is definitely out.'

'I hadn't thought of her specifically. But if she's Potter's unique heiress, Potter's money can't be the motive. So who would benefit from you going to Azkaban, if we discount hate or vengeance as a motive?'

'Nobody,' Lucius answered promptly. 'That is…' Eyes narrowing, he stared out of the window.

'Yes?' Hermione prompted.

'Well, considering that my life expectancy would be rather short…'

'That's true,' Hermione said. 'The ten years you spent there would be a piece of cake compared to what you'd have to expect after publicly killing Harry. No offence.'

'None taken.' It sounded a bit strained. 'I wouldn't give myself more than five years.'

'Does that mean Draco,' Hermione began.

'No, Draco formally renounced his inheritance.' Lucius bit his lip. 'I countersigned the document the same day as the divorce papers. Which goes to show that even in Azkaban there are bad days and worse days.'

'Oh,' Severus said, looking rather surprised. 'I had no idea. I'd always assumed Draco would…'

'So had I.' Lucius was stirring his tea in a manner that suggested he wasn't thinking of stirring, and not of tea either. 'In a way, it was the logical thing for him to do, although…' He paused. 'Quite difficult to accept.'

'And a very good reason for whoever would profit from your death to get you off the scene as soon as possible,' Hermione remarked, 'Before you could father another heir. Legitimate heir,' she added as an afterthought. 'I suppose that you could have – I beg your pardon,' she said hastily, when Severus snorted audibly.

'Your confidence in my procreative abilities honours me more than words could express,' Lucius said gravely and kissed her hand.

'Now you're being frivolous.'

He flicked his hair back over his shoulder and gave her a mocking look. 'The thought of my good self rushing out of Azkaban and into bed with an assortment of struggling virgins doesn't bear serious thought, Madam.'

'Not bed, necessarily,' Severus threw in with a grin that made Hermione wonder what exactly the two of them had been up to in their largely misspent youth.

'My dear Severus, the begetting of a proper Malfoy heir has to take place in the master bedroom. It's a family tradition. You're conceived and born in that room, and if you can manage, you die there, although that's not always achievable. Just have a look at the family chronicles.'

'Which of course always tell the truth,' Hermione said, desperately trying to keep a straight face.

'Well, there might be a few, erm, embellishments here and there, but on the whole, yes, they do.'

Severus rolled his eyes. 'I bet they don't say anything about old Abraxas being conceived in the garden shed. He told me the story himself.'

'He was scarcely an eye witness,' Lucius said scathingly. 'Grandmother thought it was romantic, though I can't quite fathom why.'

'And why struggling virgins?' Hermione said, a little shocked at the direction her rambling thoughts had taken.

'Well, one would like to be sure that a Malfoy heir was one's own. And as for the struggling – virgins just do, it's a trope.'

'I don't remember struggling a lot.' Then she saw the glint in Malfoy's eyes and hastily changed the subject. 'Back to the question of motive – who _would_ inherit if you died without an heir?'

'My great-uncle Sulphurus,' Lucius said slowly. 'The black sheep.'

'What exactly is the Malfoy definition of a black sheep?' Hermione asked. To judge from Malfoy's murderous expression, it wasn't just about gambling away the family fortune and frolicking with females of dubious reputation.

'I think,' Lucius said, 'that this would be the right moment to have a look at the family chronicles. They contain a surprising amount of highly fascinating information.'


	8. Chapter 8

CHAPTER SEVEN – TWO DAYS LATER, AT GODRIC'S HOLLOW

'Attempted murder? And who in bloody hell is Sulphurus Malfoy?' Harry stared at Hermione as if she'd told him a delegation of Martians had sabotaged his broom. 'I never heard of the guy!'

Incredulity aside, he was looking more alive than she'd seen him in the weeks since Ron's death, and that alone was worth her blatant breach of the rules. She ought to have gone to her Head of Department first, or to the Minister, and submitted the result of her investigations. Rumours about Harry being the intended victim of what hadn't been an accident had begun to leak out though. She knew for sure that there wouldn't be time to tell Harry before the big press conference the Minister was bound to call as soon as she informed him that the case was closed. She didn't want Harry to learn from the papers who had killed their best friend and why. So she hadn't dithered for long – Sulphurus was being detained in one of the Ministry's maximum security cells, and she'd Apparated off to Godric's Hollow leaving the guards with strict instructions not to allow access to anybody but her. She'd pretended that she needed to go and finish her report before talking to the Minister and would be back in an hour. An hour was enough, she'd thought, to break the news to Harry.

'I think I've heard the name,' Ginny said pensively. She was perching on the armrest of Harry's chair and looking every bit as hooked as her husband. 'Wasn't he involved with Grindelwald?'

'That too,' Hermione said. 'But he wasn't very successful, on account of being a second son. That's obviously not a part one would like to play in an old pureblood family.'

'Not before they discovered how to determine the child's gender, so there weren't any second sons,' Ginny confirmed. 'What did you say he was? Malfoy's great-uncle? Okay, so he was certainly born earlier.'

'In 1895, to be exact. An afterthought, in every sense of the word. Ten years younger than his sister, and his brother – that would be Zaphanius, Lucius's grandfather – was thirteen years his senior.'

'And Grindelwald didn't want him?' Harry asked.

'No, he'd already bagged Zaphanius and Abraxas. They had the money, after all, and the influence, so why bother with a younger son? Sulphurus was allowed to participate in a few minor skirmishes during the late nineteen-twenties, got caught and was shipped back to England post haste. He didn't even have the satisfaction of seeing his father and older brother punished after Grindelwald's defeat, because they hadn't committed any crimes in England, and Germany wasn't on the best of terms with us at the time.'

'He told you all that?'

'That and much more, but I first read about it in the Malfoy family chronicles, after Lu- I mean Mr Malfoy had brought him up as a possible suspect.'

'You involved Lucius Malfoy in a criminal investigation?' Ginny asked, visibly bristling.

'Since he had obviously been targeted,' Hermione replied coolly, 'it seemed like an excellent idea. And it was.'

'But he's a criminal himself! You of all people ought to…' She looked down at Harry, who had put his arm around her and was fondling her rounded belly. 'All right,' she said grudgingly, 'go on.'

'When Zaphanius' father died, the whole Malfoy fortune went to him. It seems that Sulphurus was left a small legacy, but Zaphanius managed to swindle him out of even that. After Zapahanius' death, Sulphurus approached Abraxas, who sent him on his way with nothing, and so did Lucius once he inherited. You can imagine the hate and envy the old man must've been feeling – although I have to say, it was also his own fault. He always felt entitled to part of the Malfoy money and did nothing with his life except plot and hate. I daresay he was overjoyed when Lucius went to prison – twenty years, just imagine. A ticket to early death. When Narcissa divorced Lucius, Sulphurus was already waiting behind the scenes. He went to see her – that's what he said, I'd call it ambushing – and asked her how much she'd got, and how much Draco had got, and whether Draco would still inherit. According to him, she threw him out but obviously let slip that Draco had formally renounced his birthright to the Malfoy fortune. That was when his plan began to take form.'

'Except for the The-Murderer-Is-in-this-Room part,' Harry said appreciatively, 'you're doing an excellent impersonation of Hercule Poirot.'

Hermione reached over to pat his knee. 'Thank you, that's very gratifying. Love the moustache.'

'But how on earth did he get Malfoy's wand?' Ginny asked, dutifully playing her part in this crimino-Socratic dialogue.

'Oh, that was easy. He's an Animagus, you know. And not a beetle or an elephant, which would have been quite useless. No, he's a beech marten. So getting to Azkaban unseen was quite easy for him – he just had to hide in one of the boats, and getting in and out of the building was a piece of cake. Bureaucracy helped, too, because the wands are all labelled.'

'All right,' Harry said, 'so he'd got the wand and returned to the mainland. Then he probably Apparated to Godric's Hollow. What then?'

'It's quite obvious, really. He hadn't only taken Malfoy's wand but also some of his hair. So he could slip into the broom shed as a marten, change back into human form, take the Polyjuice Potion with Malfoy's hair, cast the curse, and that's it.'

'The Polyjuice – you've lost me there. Okay, I'll ask later. Why Poly – but how could he have known that Ron…' Harry fell silent and looked at her with an expression of dawning terror.

Hermione sighed. This was the part she had been dreading. 'I'm afraid he meant for you to have that accident, Harry, possibly during the charity match. He didn't intend it to be lethal, or that's what he said at least, but it was meant for you.'

'But I told you I don't even know the guy!'

'Nor does he know you. It wasn't anything personal, I know that's cold comfort, but he merely wanted to make sure that Lucius would be going back to Azkaban, and this time for life. After murdering Harry Potter, how long do you think he'd have survived, if he hadn't been lynched before he even reached Azkaban? And all the Malfoy fortune would have gone to Sulphurus. He may be 113, but he's very sprightly. I'd say he's got at least another 50 years to live. Take away a maximum of five till Lucius's death, and he would still have enjoyed his wealth for well over 40 years.'

'That's disgusting!' Ginny spat.

'I agree. He's… oh, evil doesn't even begin to cover it. He's greed and envy and hate personified. Completely without any sense of guilt or ability to tell right from wrong. We're lucky that he was so intent on getting his hands on the Malfoy fortune, because in my opinion, he's worse even than Voldemort. And it's the most disgusting crime I've ever had to investigate. Not merely because it cost Ron's life, but because of the man's callousness – he just decided that somebody completely innocent and unrelated to all this would have to be seriously injured or dead, so he'd get rich. It might have been you, Ginny, and your unborn child. Or Arthur or George. It's horrible, the way he decided that someone had to be sacrificed so he could get his money.'

Tears running down his face, Harry stared at his friend. 'But Ron… it's so… so totally senseless!'

'Death scarcely ever makes sense, Harry, although we sometimes like to think so, because ten lives were spared through the sacrifice of one. But when all's said and done, it's always completely senseless. '

'But if he'd died in the war…'

'It might have seemed more meaningful at first glance, but you would still have felt it was because of you. Be honest Harry, since the moment he stepped onto that chess board in your stead, when we were still children, if something had happened to him you would always have thought of it that way. As a sacrifice, whether willingly or unwillingly made.'

'That's not fair!' Harry said hoarsely.

'Maybe not, but I think it's true. You'll never come to terms with his death, unless you stop thinking about it that way. You'll always feel guilty, and that's not how it ought to be.' She rose and went over to kiss his cheek. 'I've got to go now, I'm sorry. But if you feel like talking about it, you know that my door is always open. Bye, Ginny. I'll see myself out.'


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER EIGHT – A MONTH LATER, AT SEVERUS SNAPE'S HOUSE

'_The sight was terrible and made them fly; Nausicaa fled not, but hid her eyes_,' Severus declaimed, when he'd opened his door to a clearly irate Lucius, and put his hand over his eyes with a dramatic flourish.

'Stop that nonsense, will you!' Lucius hissed.

'At least you're dressed in more than _a bough with many leaves on it you wringed from a tree_. Surely Nausicaa would've jumped you right in front of her maidens. Behold his hair, platinum blond and sleek – Art thou Witch Weekly's centrefold of t'week? It limps a bit, but then I'm improvising. Stop staring daggers at me and come in!'

Lucius did as he was told, still angry but also reluctantly amused. 'I'll have to get used to this new, improved version of Severus Snape,' he said. Shrugging off his cloak, he automatically held it out for a House Elf to take. Since Severus merely smirked but didn't oblige, he had to hang it up himself in the end, though with visible reluctance, and followed his friend into the living room. 'Seeing you in a good mood is slightly disconcerting,' he observed. 'And you didn't use to quote the Odyssey very often in the past. Or anything else actually, except Voldemort's Guidebook to Mindless Obedience, as did we all.'

Severus shrugged. 'Voldemort wouldn't have appreciated it, although his name would have fitted nicely into a hexameter or blank verse. Then again, maybe an ode or sonnet now and then would have saved us many a cherished moment of writhing on the floor in agony, who knows? Shall I compare thee to a churchyard's breeze…Tea, or am I right in guessing you'd like something stronger?'

'Stronger, and a lot of it.' Lucius sat down and looked round the room. 'Where have your books gone? I remember you having tons of them – this can't even be half of them.'

'Upstairs study. I finally decided to move them – the scientific works, that is. What you see here is all for pleasure, not business.' He picked up a bottle from the side table and summoned two tumblers from the kitchen. 'What's ailing you, Lucius? _With what thick clouds Jove cover'd has thy brow_!'

Lucius accepted his glass and drank the contents down in one gulp. Then he held it out for a refill. 'She refused to do anything about my parole!'

Severus didn't have to ask who "she" was. 'That's what she said right from the beginning.'

'Things have changed in the meantime. The information I gave her was vital for solving her case.'

'That's certainly true, but did she promise you anything in exchange for your help?'

'I was most definitely under that impression. Do you have a Pensieve?'

Having known Lucius for such a long time, Severus was aware that it was best to let him have his way, if he was in one of his obstinate moods. Which was probably, he thought on his way upstairs, why Lucius had formed the belief that the universe was some kind of decoration created for the sole purpose of bringing out the colour of his hair. Nobody had ever refused him anything – well, Narcissa had, in a way, when she divorced him, and so had Draco, in the end, by renouncing his inheritance and thus severing the last remaining bond. But that had happened at a time when Lucius was powerless and in prison, which meant that he was being even more obnoxious now than he'd ever been, merely to prove to himself and the world at large that he hadn't lost his grip.

With a sigh, Severus decided that the Moral Education of Lucius Malfoy wasn't on his to-do list today, carefully lifted the Pensieve out of a cupboard in his study and carried it downstairs. He watched his blond friend as he drew out the memory, and then bent into the basin to have a look at Hermione's first encounter with Lucius, ten days after his release, at the Ministry for Magic.

'I can see why you thought she'd agreed,' he said, after the silvery wisp had been put back in Lucius's head. 'But I can also see why she thought she hadn't. Frankly, Lucius, I don't think you stand a chance.'

'Defeatist nonsense,' Lucius muttered, but he didn't sound too convinced. 'I want my freedom, and I want it now.' He poured himself another glass.

'You're sulking, Lucius, and you're drunk, or beginning to be. Count your blessings – they could've left you in there for the full twenty years.'

'Blessings you can count,' Lucius retorted peevishly, 'are usually not even worth counting.'

'It's just one year! Two months have already passed, you only have to wait ten more months until you regain complete freedom. Do you really want to jeopardize all that, merely to make a point?'

Lucius sat, head bent, staring into his glass. 'Who said anything about jeopardizing?'

Throwing his hands up in exasperation, Severus began to pace. 'I'm saying it, because I know you. If you feel you've been cheated out of something that is rightly yours, however unjustified or irrational your perception of the facts may be, you usually don't rest until you've obtained what you want. I'd advise you, however' – he stopped walking and leaned against the fireplace – 'I'd advise you not to try anything foolish in your current situation. I know you can't cope with not being the alpha male, but for once, just this once, try to accept that there's someone you can't bend to your will!'

'I wouldn't say that I can't. But I'm well aware that you don't want me to. The reason is obvious, of course. You're besotted with the widow, aren't you?'

'The widow, as you call her, is my friend and might well be more one day. But that's not the point, Lucius. Hermione is well able to defend herself. It's you I'm worried about.'

'That's really very touching, Severus, and I appreciate it. But you are aware, aren't you, that if I tried to, as you expressed it, make a point, the lady might, let us say, have some difficulties?'

Severus felt his face go hot, and it wasn't just because he was standing next to the fireplace. 'This amounts to you making me choose between you and her.'

'There's no need to over-dramatize things,' Lucius said, shrugging, 'And usually that's my prerogative, I might point out. No, I don't want you to choose. I merely want you to put an end to your sentimental worrying and let me do whatever it is I want to do without your constant meddling. You may remain sitting on the fence, for all I care.'

'Very well,' Severus said tonelessly. 'If that is what you wish. But I'll have to tell Hermione.'

'Oh, no! Oh no, you won't!'

'Give me a reason why I shouldn't.'

'Because,' Lucius said slowly, his enunciation already a little slurry, 'I'm calling in your life debt.'

'What? Lucius, you're drunk! You're calling in my life debt over such a trifle? Don't be ridiculous!'

Lucius snorted. 'That's what you always say when you're desperate.'

'It's what I always say when you're being ridiculous. Don't you see how childish this is getting?'

Lucius's glass hit the table with a sharp Thunk! 'Don't patronize me, Severus, it doesn't suit you. Now come here, I have to perform the spell.' He stared at Severus, who wasn't moving. 'I'm going to use _Imperio_, if you refuse.'

'Merlin help me,' Severus muttered, pushing himself off the wall. 'Have it your way then.' He went over to stand next to Lucius. 'Are you sure,' he said quietly, 'that you don't want to think about this?'

'Absolutely sure.'

For a few seconds the room was bathed in the red and blue aura of the spell Lucius was weaving, his face a mask of concentration despite his inebriation. When he'd finished, their faces were once again cast into half-shadow by the flames dancing in the fireplace.

'And now,' Lucius said, putting his wand back into his left sleeve, 'I'd like another glass. Let's have a drink like the old friends we are – you must tell me all about the merciless widow.'

And Severus did what he'd wanted to do – though admittedly with varying degrees of intensity – for the last thirty-seven years. He punched Lucius squarely in the face.


	10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER NINE – BOXING DAY, AT 'LA GONDOLE MAGIQUE'

'I've wanted to come here since they opened this place,' Hermione said.

They had passed though a secret entrance in the Embankment Station building – to an observant Muggle it would have looked like the door to an unused maintenance room and triggered the irresistible wish to get away from that eldritch corner – and were standing on the jetty that gave access to one of wizarding London's newest and most acclaimed restaurants. Critics couldn't quite agree what was more awe-inspiring: the food or the exotic locations it was served in. La Gondole Magique was, just as the name led to believe, a large boat in the shape of a Venetian gondola, equipped with spells and charms that enabled it to travel in a way similar to the ship Durmstrang's staff and students used for longer trips. Now it was also decorated for Christmas, and the light of the fairies perching on the masts and tows was reflected in the black water of the Thames, so that the ship seemed to float on a carpet of diamonds.

'It's beautiful, and if the food is half as good as they say…' She glanced up at Severus. 'You seem a bit subdued.'

He smiled at her and leaned in for a kiss. 'A minor disappointment.'

'Anything I can do to help?'

Severus sighed. 'Not really, I'm afraid. Let's go in, shall we? It's bitterly cold out here.'

They made their way along the jetty, which was swaying slightly, and stepped onto the boat. The restaurant, a few steps down from the deck, was under the waterline, which made for a cosy and enclosed atmosphere. The rich reds, browns and golden accents of the decoration – Hermione merely gave Severus a good-natured little push when he muttered something about Gryffindor colour schemes – conveyed a den-like feel to the room; otherwise, Hermione thought, it might have been a bit claustrophobic.

A waiter met them at the door and checked their reservations. He was clad in something that vaguely resembled the sailor suits Hermione's father wore on childhood photos, and Severus had to nudge her twice because she was giggling, but nudging only made it worse.

'We shall be leaving in half an hour,' the waiter informed them, ignoring Hermione's fit of near-hysterical snorting, 'right on schedule. Dinner will be served as we reach the Great Barrier Reef, about ten minutes after the departure. May I accompany you to your booth?'

'I'm having trouble stopping myself from jumping up and down,' Hermione confided to Severus as they followed the waiter. 'I've never been anywhere near Australia – my parents insisted on making the trip back on their own, probably because the Ministry had sent Redfoot and Bielinski to reverse their memory spells. They didn't react too well to the sight of a wand for quite some time.'

'I taught Bielinski during his seventh year, which was my first at Hogwarts. If he's as clumsy with charms as he used to be with potions… Thank you,' he said to the waiter who'd handed them the list of aperitifs. 'What would you like to drink, Hermione?'

'The way I'm feeling tonight, champagne seems like the only option,' she replied.

The waiter retired and Severus focused his full attention on Hermione. 'You are very beautiful tonight.' He reached across the table to catch her hand, and kissed her wrist. 'What was that about the way you're feeling?'

Hermione gingerly touched her coiffure. 'It's the hair, isn't it? Makes all the difference.'

'No, my darling, it's you. You're positively radiant.'

'Say that again!'

'You're positively radiant.'

'Not that!' Hermione batted his hand. 'The other bit!'

'I have no idea what you're talking about,' Severus said, mischief sparkling in his eyes. 'I seem to be suffering from a momentary bout of amnesia – until you tell me more about the way you're feeling tonight, that is.'

The waiter brought the bottle, held it out to Severus for inspection and, once it had been duly approved, carefully opened it.

Hermione picked her flute off the silver tray the waiter offered her. She waited until the bottle had been securely stored in a waiting ice bucket, and the waiter had left. 'To mating rituals,' she said, raising her glass.

'A toast the originality of which is only surpassed by the promises it holds. To mating rituals.' Their glasses clinked together, and Severus got a tantalizing glimpse of black lace as Hermione leaned forward. 'This neckline suits you to perfection. It enhances the line of your shoulders and neck. Which, I would like to point out, I feel an irresistible urge to kiss.'

'Do you? That's good to know.' Eyes dancing, she stroked the stem of her flute; Severus's eyes were following the movement of her fingers, mesmerized. His face had taken on an uncharacteristic pink hue. 'Anything else you'd like to kiss?' She suggestively licked a drop of champagne off the rim of her glass.

'Hermione…' Severus shifted in his seat, which made her grin, and took a fortifying sip. 'If that's how the evening is going to continue, I ought to have read up on deflating charms. Oh Merlin,' he murmured, when a silk-clad foot began slowly to move up and down his calf. 'Hermione, does this mean…'

'You're definitely going to get lucky tonight, if that's what you wanted to know.' When a full minute had passed in silence, Hermione giggled. 'If I had known that this announcement was going to be a massive conversation killer, I'd have kept you on tenterhooks a bit longer.' She reached over to touch Severus's cheek. 'This stunned silence – is it stage nerves or enraptured anticipation?'

'A little of both, I'd say. It's not often that I actually care what a woman will have to say about my performance.'

After draining her glass and putting it down, Hermione took his right hand in both of hers. 'I'm aware that insecurity isn't a female monopoly. But look at it this way: I haven't had sex for, oh, two years, easily, and before that only ever with one man. Believe me, I'm also quite anxious about my performance. Because this is serious, isn't it?'

'Very,' he confirmed gravely.

She opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted by a Sonorus-enhanced voice. 'Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Welcome to La Gondole Magique – I trust you will all spend a very enjoyable evening at the Great Barrier Reef. For your own safety, the ship's inbuilt Sleeping Beauty spells will be activated in thirty seconds. Please put aside your glasses and extinguish cigarettes, pipes and cigars. The ship will be leaving in exactly twenty seconds.'

The two remained as they were, holding hands, and stayed frozen in their position until the spell was lifted and both blinked to adjust their eyes to the sudden flood of light coming in through the windows. They had arrived at the Great Barrier Reef.


	11. Chapter 11

CHAPTER TEN – FIVE HOURS LATER, AT HERMIONE'S FLAT

Her legs covered by the blanket and naked from the waist upwards, Hermione was leaning comfortably against the padded headboard of her bed and smoking a cigarette. She'd taken up the habit of enjoying a post-coital cigarette a few years ago, mostly to spite Ron. If you could call something you had done once every six weeks, for only three years, a habit, she thought grimly. Well, she had every intention of consuming a lot of cigarettes in the future.

Severus emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. 'You ought to have joined me,' he murmured, slipping back under the covers.

'I was in a bit of a dilemma. I would have liked to do all kinds of naughty things with soap, but in the end I decided that I wanted to keep your scent on my skin.'

With his arm around her shoulders, he began to nuzzle her throat. 'A very valid argument, my darling. Only I hate feeling sweaty.'

'Pity,' Hermione said, bending away from him to stub out her cigarette, 'because I'm planning on getting you very sweaty again.' She pushed him onto his back and got up on her knees to sit astride him. 'Are you feeling better now?'

He snorted. 'I can't remember ever having felt better.'

'You seemed a bit out of sorts earlier in the evening. You said something about being disappointed.'

'Oh, that. Yes, I was, but that has somehow receded into a haze of good food and marvellous sex. In strictly chronological order.'

'Wouldn't you like to tell me about it?'

Severus opened his eyes which had fluttered closed when she'd started caressing his chest and arms. 'I don't think I want to go there right now.'

'It's about Lucius, isn't it?'

Propping himself up on his elbows, he frowned at her. 'What makes you think it is?'

'Well, is it?' She leaned forward to nibble his earlobe.

'Erm, yes. But I can't tell you about it, my darling.'

'Can't?'

'Yes, can't. It's not that I don't want to, I really can't.'

'Works a bit like a Fidelius Charm, doesn't it?'

Severus stared up at her. 'You're a Legilimens?'

'I wish I were, sometimes. Though I would never use it on you, and certainly not without your explicit permission.'

'Well, that's a relief.' He let himself fall back into the cushions, still visibly shaken. 'But how _do_ you know?'

'Do you promise not to tell anybody? It's still new, and highly classified – a brand new gadget we've been working on.'

'Of course I won't tell anybody. You know you can trust me.'

Hermione kissed him deeply, in a sudden outburst of emotion. 'I know I can, my love.'

She was holding him so tightly that he could almost hear his ribs crack, but it was a wonderful feeling. 'Say that again.'

'I know I can.'

He chuckled and smacked her arse. 'Not that, the other bit.'

'My love.'

Half an hour later, the tendrils of smoke from another cigarette were curling up towards the ceiling.

'You were going to tell me about some sensational new whatever-it-is,' Severus drawled lazily. 'Before we got a bit… distracted.'

'So I was. Buss me, my lord – you don't mind if I taste of cigarette, do you?'

'Not in the least. I think I'd like one myself. So,' he said, lighting up, 'about that invention.'

'It's a combination between a tracking spell and an eavesdropping charm, basically,' Hermione said. 'A bit similar to what Fred and George used when they created the Extendable Ears, but of course infinitely more subtle and really quite complicated. I had the idea about a year ago, when preparations were made to release the first prisoners on parole. We – that would be the Wizengamot, the Minister, my boss and I – agreed that their reintegration into society would come off a lot more smoothly if we let them out a bit earlier.'

'Reintegrating Lucius into society is every bit as impossible as squeezing an elephant through a keyhole.'

'If you tried with a very small elephant and a very big keyhole… Yep, still impossible. Then again, prolonged isolation isn't exactly conducive to re-socialization. In any case, we'd decided that they still ought to report back to the Ministry every ten days once they were out – really more for psychological reasons, to remind them that we're keeping an eye on them. But what we needed was constant monitoring, and so we came up with the spell. Bill, Bill Weasley that is, did the final polishing. He had this brilliant idea to insert a kind of trigger into the formula. We didn't want the subjects to know they'd been tagged, and Bill found a way to place the spell on one's own hand first, so it can be transferred by touch and activated by the target's magical aura. Bill's a genius.'

'I'm reluctant to agree, merely on principle, but yes, that is indeed quite brilliant. So, there's the target on one end – what's on the other?'

'A modified Pensieve. That part still requires a bit of work, because as it is now, somebody has to go through its contents every day, then put the memories in a sealed vessel – seeing as all this is highly confidential, we can't let any Tom, Dick or Harry do it. And with more prisoners being released on parole, it would be too much work for me alone.'

'So,' Severus said, absentmindedly stroking her thigh, 'you saw Lucius's visit the other day at my house.'

'I'm very glad you punched him, or I would've had to go and do it myself.'

'He would probably have enjoyed that. He's always had that soft spot for dominant women.'

'Severus, I wouldn't have spanked him, I would have broken his fucking aristocratic nose!' She sat up and grinned at him. 'Did it crunch satisfyingly? Books always say it crunches satisfyingly.'

'You are a very disturbing young woman,' Severus said severely. 'And I'm very tired. Let's sleep for a bit, hm?'


	12. Chapter 12

CHAPTER ELEVEN – THE NEXT MORNING, AT HERMIONE'S FLAT

'This really is a nice place,' Severus declared, wandering into the kitchen where Hermione was making coffee.

'Oh, you're up already. I like it too – the house was really too big for me alone, and I've always preferred the city to the country. Did you sleep well?'

'I'm a bit unused to sharing a bed, but yes, I slept quite well.' He caught her by the sash of her dressing gown and pulled her into a tight embrace. 'And the disturbing young woman?'

'Although not used to being viciously kicked in the shins,' Hermione replied with dignity, 'the lady enjoyed a few hours of very refreshing sleep. And in spite of all that lovely food we had last night, I'm ravenous. What would you like for breakfast?'

'Just coffee for the moment, thanks. But I don't mind watching you eat.'

'You could feed me tidbits, that's supposed to be very romantic.'

'Tidbits of poached egg would be messy rather than romantic, I daresay. But I'll try feeding you small bites of toast, and you can eat out of my hand, like a shy bird of paradise. Although you'd be more of a shy maenad, and that's an oxymoron.'

Hermione glared and made a vain attempt to smooth down her hair. 'Speaking of morons…' They both burst out laughing and shared a coffee-flavoured kiss.

'You,' Severus said, holding her close, 'are in grave danger of becoming the love of my life.'

'What happened to poor Lily? Did I kick her off the pedestal?'

After a short but successful hunt through the cupboards Severus found the mugs and put them on the table together with the coffee pot. 'Lily didn't stay up there for very long. Where are the spoons?'

'Second drawer left of the stove. Severus, there's no need to spare my delicate sensibilities – I saw the memories you left Harry.'

'I'd suspected you might have.' He sat down and watched her prepare her toast and eggs. 'But I'm telling you the truth. They were my memories, and they were genuine, but quite old. When I'd just turned spy for Dumbledore, that was the time when they were really haunting me, all the time.'

'Why give them to Harry, then?'

'For the very simple reason that Potter wasn't much more than a child at the time, half-dead with fright and about to confront Voldemort. I'd heard men older than him cry for their mothers when they were frightened or dying. So I thought seeing her would comfort him.'

Hermione looked over her shoulder and smiled at him. 'That was nice.'

'It was vitally important, that's what it was. Besides I had this feeling that I wasn't going to die, and so I rather needed him to change his opinion of me, unless I wanted to spend the rest of my life in Azkaban, which I certainly didn't.'

'What about your Patronus, then?'

Severus rolled his eyes. 'You ought to know that Patronuses become fully formed between the age of fourteen and seventeen. And they can't be changed – if they could, do you think I'd have kept Bambi? Hermione, dear, if you continue to heap this table with delicacies, I'll have to join you.'

In the end, they both enjoyed a hearty breakfast with gusto. Mutual feeding was unanimously postponed to a less hungry day when fingers wouldn't be in danger of being bitten off.

'I'd like to ask you a question,' Hermione said, once she'd won their struggle for the last slice of ham.

'Usually you don't bother announcing them.'

'No, I only do that with important questions.'

'Proposing already?' Severus drizzled honey on a generously buttered piece of toast. 'All right, I'm game.'

'Don't be silly – you meant that, didn't you?'

'Yes, I did, but since that doesn't seem to be the question you had in mind, we'll leave it for later. Out with it, woman. What was it you meant to ask?'

'Have Lucius and you ever, you know, shared?'

'Shared what?'

'Women.'

'Good heavens, Hermione, what kind of a question is this?'

'A rather interesting one, I'd say.'

'That's an understatement, if ever I saw one. But if you must know, yes, we have.'

'Did you like it?'

Severus put down his half-eaten toast and switched effortlessly into teacher-mode. Hermione raised her coffee mug to hide a smile. 'Hermione, this may be news to you, but every man dreams of having threesomes. Usually with two women, at least that's what most men will tell you if you ask them, because they're afraid you might take them for homo- or bisexual. More self-assured individuals of the male persuasion, though, will readily admit that a threesome involving only one woman is a lot more interesting.'

'Is it now?' Hermione refilled her mug. 'You see, Severus, I'm asking you this because I've always thought that… No, let me put it like this: When two men are really good friends, and one of them starts a serious relationship with a woman, there's always this kind of pressure, often imaginary, let's call it an unspoken imperative that he has to choose between his friend and his partner, isn't there?'

'It might become a problem, in certain cases,' Severus said cautiously.

'Mm-hm. When I watched that scene between you and Malfoy, I had a feeling that it might become a problem in our case, provided you'll ever allow that bastard to darken your doorstep again.'

'What on earth has that got to do with a three – no, I don't think I want to hear the answer!'

'Are you sure you don't? Because what I think is… It might be the solution to many problems. That eternal rivalry between the two of you, and Malfoy's, Lucius's I should say, notorious inability to keep away from mischief – he clearly loves to rile you up, don't you think he'd try to plant a tiny little doubt into your mind, sooner or later?'

'You think you could put a stop to that by sleeping with him?'

'Not with him, darling, with both of you. Not always, because I don't think I could stand having a permanent relationship with Lucius Malfoy. It would be like having some kind of maniacally growing plant – I'd feel a constant need to cut him back. No, I was rather thinking along the lines of a semi-permanent arrangement, what do you think?'

'He'll want to have sex on a one-to-one basis with you, too!'

'You could watch. Secretly, of course. And I promise to make faces at him behind his back.'

Severus passed a hand across his eyes. 'I can't believe I'm having this conversation. Are you serious?'

'Oh, yes. What about giving it a try, just once, and seeing how it works out?'

'You seriously want to fuck Lucius?'

'I must confess I've always found him rather attractive, in a train-wreck kind of way.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Train-wreck. Something you're not supposed to stare at but feel compelled to. I'd like to stress the fact that I love you, and am in love with you, and that Lucius is merely a kind of fantasy I've had.'

'Everybody has fantasies about Lucius. The Archbishop of Canterbury probably has fantasies about Lucius!'

'What about you? Don't you?'

'I'm not… not completely immune to his charm. Surprisingly less immune to him as he's now, much as it pains me to admit it.'

Grabbing her mug, Hermione stood up and slunk around the table and onto Severus's lap. 'That sounds very promising, Severus. May I' – she traced the open V of his half-unbuttoned shirt with a gentle fingernail – 'maybe watch a memory? Or two?'

'Ye Gods! Hermione, don't get me wrong, because it's the best surprise I've ever had, but I would never have expected you to have such a, well, naughty side.'

'It's not something you can freely indulge in, when you're in my position. The one time I mentioned it to Ron – Harry wasn't yet married then and would surely have given it a try – I thought he was going to have a heart attack. And, apart from professional reasons, I couldn't imagine doing it with anybody I don't trust.'

'Lucius seems like a rather exotic, not to say bizarre, choice, if that's the required standard.'

'Yes and no. You see, once he'll have understood that I'll be neither blackmailed nor bribed, and that threatening me is a very bad idea indeed, I think he's going to be the soul of discretion.'

'That's definitely a possibility. Only…' He fell silent and rolled his eyes. 'Bugger, I forgot I can't talk about it.'

Hermione chuckled and kissed the tip of his nose. 'You meant to warn me about the, erm, trap he means to set for me.' He nodded. 'I can tell you all about it. You know, maybe it's because he was all by himself in a cell for such a long time, but the man has quite an annoying habit of talking to himself.'


	13. Chapter 13

CHAPTER TWELVE – TWO DAYS LATER, AT THE MINISTRY FOR MAGIC

'So we meet again, Mr Malfoy, the last time this year.' Hermione rose behind her desk and extended her hand for him to kiss.

'I am overjoyed, Madam.'

'Mr Malfoy, one ought always to tell the truth to one's parole officer.'

'Believe me, I'm being completely sincere. I would not have said the same to Mr Blenkinsop, to name but one hair-raising example.'

Hermione glared at him in a very-much-not-amused way. 'Do all your roses come with poisoned thorns?'

'Only if the recipient knows how to appreciate them.'

'I'll let that pass, Mr Malfoy.' She opened the file she'd prepared. 'Well then, Mr Malfoy…'

'Do you think you might call me Lucius, just while we're talking, well, privately?'

With the coolest of glances she could muster, Hermione said, 'Don't you think you're overstepping your boundaries, Mr Malfoy? This is most emphatically not a private conversation. But I'm of course willing to call you Lucius, if that makes you feel more at your ease. So, Lucius, what have you been doing these last ten days?'

With a theatrical sigh, Lucius leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. 'Nothing much, really. I've been wandering about my estate – dear Severus did what he could, but with the Lord of the Manor away…'

'The Elves will play. I understand. What else? I can hardly imagine you, wandering about your estates lonely as a cloud, for ten days running.'

'Oh, this and that… The library seems to be my only consolation nowadays.'

'So you have been reading?' Lucius nodded, every inch the reluctant hermit. 'Would you mind telling me what?'

He cleared his throat. 'Madam, I really couldn't…'

'I don't think this attitude is going to help, Mr, erm, Lucius.'

'Far be it from me to obstruct the course of justice, but you're a woman, and-'

'Mr Malfoy. Lucius. If you've been reading porn, just tell me. I don't need the exact title or select text passages.'

'That would be difficult. There wasn't a lot of text.'

'Porn, then.'

Lucius cringed elaborately. 'Do you really have to put that into my file?'

'Nobody's going to read it. It's confidential, so you don't have to worry.'

'If nobody's going to read it, why do you have to write it down?'

'Because the file needs to be… Oh, very well. What would you like me to write?'

'Machiavelli's _Prince_, for instance. Very believable, but not as embarrassing.'

She nodded. 'Machiavelli. Fine. Anything else you'd like to tell me about the past ten days?'

'There isn't much to tell, I'm afraid.'

'People you've met?'

'I did meet Severus, yesterday at his house. He, erm, gave me a potion.'

'A potion. I see. Anything worth mentioning?'

'I don't think so, no. Some concoction to help me sleep.'

Hermione looked up sharply from her writing. 'I think I'd like to know more about that potion. Why didn't you buy it in a shop?'

He gave an artistic shrug. 'Not everything can be bought in shops, Madam. I mean,' he continued hastily, 'not that it contained anything illegal, it's just that… Severus is the best, as you ought to know.'

A rather silly smile spread across her face. 'Oh, he definitely is.'

'You see? So you wouldn't want to… I mean, not that there would be… Could I tell you confidentially, off the record so to speak?'

'Hm. I'm not sure… All right, since it's about Severus.'

'It contains opium, and a few other ingredients I'm not familiar with. Severus told me not to mention it. But since it's harmless, nothing will come of it, I presume.'

'That depends on whether I decide to investigate.'

'You don't absolutely _have_ to put it into this file, do you?'

'Well, theoretically I do. But in this case, I rather think I won't. I can count on your discretion, Lucius, I'm sure.'

'My lips are sealed.'

CHAPTER THIRTEEN – TEN DAYS LATER, AT THE MINISTRY FOR MAGIC

'Happy New Year, Lucius.'

'The same to you, Mrs Weasley. I took the liberty to…' From the pocket of his waistcoat, he produced a small parcel. 'I do hope you're going to accept it. As a token of my gratitude. You have been extraordinarily generous.'

He'd chosen very diligently, she had to give him that. Not too expensive, but just barely on the other side of the line that separated accepting gifts from taking bribes. 'It's beautiful, Lucius. And it seems very old.'

'It's been in the family for over three hundred years. One of my ancestors had it made for his eldest daughter's eighteenth birthday.'

'Are those opals?' Hermione asked, turning the hair comb this way and that, so that the stones had to bare their hidden heart of fire.

'Yes, they are. It seems the young woman was very fond of opals.'

Lips pressed together, frowning, Hermione looked up at him. 'I'm afraid I can't accept it.'

'Really? Why not?'

'Because it's too precious, too valuable. I must always remain above any suspicion, but I don't think I have to explain that to you. What a pity,' she said.

'Could you… maybe accept it as a gift from Severus's friend?'

Her neckline was deep enough to turn her sigh into an impressive tectonic movement. 'I probably could, but as I believe I already told you, this is not a private encounter, since we're in my office, and I'm your parole officer.'

'Hm. Would it be more appropriate if I took it back, and you came to have afternoon tea with me and got a little present?'

'From the Mad Hatter?'

'The very same.'

'It still isn't what I'd call entirely appropriate, but then you are Severus's friend. Sooner or later we're going to meet socially anyway.'

'Tomorrow then? If, that is, Severus doesn't object.'

'I don't see anything objectionable in joining you for tea. Besides, I don't have to ask Severus's permission.'

He kissed her hand. 'Till tomorrow then.'

'I'm looking forward to it.' Her eyes met his with complete sincerity.


	14. Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN – THE NEXT DAY, AT MALFOY MANOR

After an entertaining conversation with the iron gate – this time it had formed itself into a Cerberus, and the translation charm hadn't achieved much in the way of stopping the three heads from constantly bickering – and a very chilly walk up the gravelled driveway, Hermione was met at the door by Dorky. The Master was expecting Madam in the library, and since the elf had looked a bit miffed last time when Severus had told it it wasn't needed, Hermione docilely let herself be guided along the corridor.

The furniture, she noticed with no small amount of amusement she was careful to dissimulate, had been arranged for the occasion in a rather different manner than last time. Gone was the table, gone were the chairs. Lucius had artistically draped himself on a large leather sofa next to the fireplace, and there was nothing for her to sit upon but the very same sofa. The low coffee table was obviously meant to allow maximum cleavage coverage, for she would have to bend forward in order to reach the food or her teacup.

'My dear Mrs Weasley!' He languidly rose from the sofa and came to meet her. 'How good of you to come. It is getting quite lonely here.'

'Even with those nice illustrated books to keep you company?' she asked, unable to pass up a perfectly good opportunity to tease him.

'Would your friend Mr Potter be content with looking at the pretty pictures in Witch Broom, if he wanted to fly for real?'

'I suppose he would, if people continue to curse his brooms. But I get your meaning. I can hardly believe, though, that you would be lacking in female company, if you really wanted it.'

'It would be quite easy to come by, if I cared for that sort of company. Do you mind sitting next to me on the sofa, or should Dorky bring a chair?'

'I'm perfectly happy sitting next to you.'

She sat down rather close to her host and allowed herself a leisurely inspection of his hair and body, while he was busy pouring their tea.

In spite of being completely immoral and a lousy judge of character, he was still more attractive than she cared to admit. Thirteen years ago, when they'd fired hexes at each other at the Department of Mysteries, it had been the aura of power and self-assurance that made him stand out among the others. Now, Hermione thought, there was something tragic about him: a patina of former grandeur, from a past era. He would've made an excellent _ci-devant_, a French nobleman exiled to foreign lands by a revolution he'd never understood, who had only his pedigree and the crest on his stationery to remind him of what he had once been. Not a has-been, but an old lion basking in the evening sun, dreaming memories of glorious hunts and cubs he'd fathered. He was only a little over fifty, still in his prime in wizarding terms, but Azkaban had stripped him of all dignity. Not that he'd ever admit that to himself, which was why he wasn't even trying to find it again. Instead, he was engaging in foolish power struggles with his best friend and his parole officer. In a way, it was quite endearing.

'I hope,' Lucius said, once they'd both selected the first round of sandwiches, 'that I'm not being indiscreet if I ask you how things are going with Severus.'

'Oh, not at all. We're still in the first stages of a relationship, but it all seems very promising.'

'I'm very glad to hear it, Mrs Weasley.'

'Since this is definitely a private occasion, I think you ought to call me Hermione.'

He inclined his blond head. 'Thank you. You know, don't you, that Severus and I go back many years, decades in fact. Our friendship hasn't always been an easy one, for obvious reasons…'

'I must admit, I was rather surprised that it had survived the war. Accepting betrayal isn't easy. But you saved his life nonetheless.'

'So I did.' A short silence ensued. 'Tell me, Hermione, that potion we talked about the other day, did you mention it to Severus?'

'Not yet, but I intend to do so. On a purely private basis, of course, since you told me about it off records.'

Lucius lovingly contemplated a salmon canapé before he ate it with apparent relish. It was followed by a sip of tea and a miniature egg and watercress sandwich. 'I hope you didn't swerve from the path of righteousness too far, by omitting that detail. And by changing the nature of my, erm, literary pursuits.'

'That's a difficult question. Let me answer it like this: if I caught a member of my staff, well, rewriting history, they'd have to leave immediately. Without severance pay, and without a letter of recommendation, if you get my drift.'

'But your superiors, I trust, are less draconian?'

'More, I'd say. But then, you promised that this was going to remain between the two of us.'

'Did I?'

'Not in so many words, but I'm sure I can trust you on this. If not for my own sake, then at least because you wouldn't want to get Severus in trouble.'

'You are quite right. I certainly do not mean to cause you or Severus any tribulation. I just hope… Tell me this, Hermione: Is it completely and utterly impossible for your omissions ever to be discovered by somebody else?'

'Impossible? You of all people ought to know that, once a secret is shared, it's not a secret anymore. So of course it isn't impossible, but it's highly improbable. After all, neither you nor I have a particular interest in anybody else learning the truth.'

Lucius took a pensive sip of tea. 'In my current situation, that's not good enough, I'm afraid.'

'Not good enough? Now look here, Lucius: I am absolutely sure that I won't ever mention it to anybody. Which leaves you. And why on earth should you talk? It's very much against your own interests.'

'Unless you're ready to kill me here and now, which I somehow doubt, I might talk. Not because I want to, Merlin forbid, but what if they make me take Veritaserum? It's common knowledge that Severus is my friend, and your relationship with him won't remain a secret forever.'

'Neither of us wants to keep it secret.'

'Of course not, why should you? Only, with all these new-fangled political ideas, with best practices and auditing and codes of conduct – does it seem like such an outlandish idea that somebody might want to have a closer look at how Severus Snape's girlfriend is handling the case of Severus Snape's friend?'

'Hm. I hadn't looked at it that way yet, I have to admit, probably because the relationship with Severus is quite a recent development. But you've definitely got a point there.' Mimicking deep thought was surprisingly easy, she found, while you were lost in contemplation of a supernaturally delicious treacle tart. 'It seems that a memory charm would be the only solution.'

'That,' Lucius said slowly, 'would be a very high price for me to pay. Allowing for a memory to be erased, in order to protect anybody but myself would be tantamount to a sacrifice. Malfoys don't do sacrifice, Hermione, not if there's nothing in it for them.'

'You'd have the satisfaction of having done Severus a great service, by protecting both him and me.'

'I've already done him a great service, and can you detect any hints of exuberant happiness?'

'Well… no. No. Lucius, I understand that you're not in the mood to play the sacrificial lamb. But all I could do, professionally, I mean, to make it worth your while would only lead to more memory charms, so it seems we're right in the middle of a vicious circle here.'

Lucius's left hand, which only seconds ago had been holding a plate, was suddenly resting on the nape of Hermione's neck. 'Don't look so dejected, Hermione,' he said softly, caressing her ear with his thumb.

She couldn't have simulated goose bumps, but then she didn't need to. They rose up all on their own. She moved a mere fraction to the right, as if wanting to lean into him and stopping herself just in time. 'I don't mean to, but it's not the kind of thing I could laugh at.'

He pulled her closer, and after a little initial resistance she let him. His mouth was very close to her ear, as he murmured, 'We'll find a solution.'

A rustle of fabric, and he kissed her.

Hermione had always thought that the 'desperate kiss' was a mere literary fiction, and not a very original one at that. Now, however, she was finding out that it was by no means a cliché. From a purely technical point of view, it was a first-class kiss. But the tremor of his hands and the way he was holding on to her owed nothing to passion. There were ten years of loneliness in that kiss, and beatings and abject desolation. Severus had been right: re-socializing this man whose moral compass had always pointed at Lucius, centre of the universe, and who had lived through ten years of isolation, where the only human contact he'd had, had brought nothing but humiliation, was practically impossible. But maybe, with just the right amount of strictness, sex and tender loving care… They might yet turn Lucius into something vaguely resembling a human being. The potential was there; he'd saved Severus's life after all.

She ended the kiss and pulled back a little, just in time to see the naked longing in his face before the mask of studied indifference slid back into place.

'A little more of this,' he said, his voice still a bit hoarse, 'and I'd allow you to erase any memory I have.'

'I don't think we need to go as far as that.' She kissed his cheek. 'But if you consider, well, this, sufficient compensation…'

Her compassion might have soured and become pity, if he hadn't asked, 'What about Severus?' with more than just feigned anxiety.

So there was something left. She smiled and breathed a kiss on his other cheek. 'Didn't I tell you I don't have to ask his permission?'

'You were referring to tea, if I remember correctly.'

'Well, I suggest that you have tea with me tomorrow, at my place. How I choose to interpret tea is my business, don't you agree?'


	15. Chapter 15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN – THE NEXT DAY, AT HERMIONE'S FLAT

She didn't have House Elves, Hermione thought, casting a look of approval at the tea table, but she was a dab hand at housekeeping and cooking spells, and her tea didn't have to dread the comparison with the tea the Malfoy elves brewed. The flat was orderly and clean, she'd even washed the curtains, and she was wearing Lucius's comb and very little else. Knickers so tiny that they'd fit into a thimble, a pair of loose silk trousers in a shade of burgundy that particularly favoured her skin tone, and a long-sleeved, Indian-style silk tunic of the same colour. No bra, of course. The feel of the silk on her breasts was divine.

Hermione went into the kitchen and filled the teapot with boiling water, refilled the kettle and opened a box of finest Lapsang Souchong. She didn't doubt Lucius's punctuality, and so she emptied the teapot at exactly five minutes to three, put in the tea leaves and spelled the kettle to boiling point. During a holiday in Tunisia with Ron, she'd learned the fine art of pouring the boiling water into the teapot in a wide arc, and she did so now with a smile on her face, because she enjoyed doing things right, even simple ones. She put the lid on the pot and left the kitchen. She arrived at the door at the exact same second Lucius knocked.

He might be an utter bastard in dire need of character refurbishment, she thought while he chastely kissed her hand, but his style was undeniable. He'd brought her flowers: Salamander Tulips with a deep red and gold pattern on their petals, which gave off a faint glimmer like that of a dying fire. It was both a subtle compliment to her house affiliation and a reminder of his impeccable taste: he knew exactly which colours suited her.

'Thank you, they're lovely!' She hung up his cloak and steered him into the living room, aware of his eyes resting on her bare feet. 'I was never that good at Herbology, and I'm afraid I've forgotten a great deal. Do they go into a copper pot or an iron pot filled with coals?'

'Copper, but I have to admit that I had to ask Nobby, the elf that does the gardening and is in charge of the greenhouses. I'm glad you like them.'

'They are absolutely wonderful,' she said with genuine warmth. 'Sit down, please' – she gestured at the sofa – 'and I'll just get the tea. Do you take milk?'

'Just a little sugar, thank you.'

'That's a relief, because I never take any and forgot to buy it. Have a look round, if you like. I'll be with you in a second.'

She glanced at him, back over her shoulder, on her way to the kitchen. It was a bit like having a tiger to tea: in his natural habitat, he looked perfectly normal and not overly big, but here, prowling her flat, he suddenly seemed larger than life. To the Manor Born, she thought with a snort.

'This,' he said when she returned from the kitchen, pointing at a small oil painting in striking gold and primary colours, 'is excellent. Fifteenth century, Siena, I'd say.'

'A less known pupil of Duccio, yes. My great-great-grandmother bought it during her Italian honeymoon for an apple and an egg, and when my grandmother died, she left it to me. I love it. It was originally part of a triptych, I suppose, because the artists usually did three scenes – Joachim and the Beggars, Nativity of the Virgin, and Presentation of the Virgin.'

'You are very knowledgeable.'

'Well, so are you. I'd hardly expected you to know anything about Renaissance painting.'

'There is little enough beauty in the world. If one is lucky enough to find it, little does it matter whether it's magical or Muggle.'

'That's very true. Now let's have some tea, shall we? I may not be a Mad Hatter, but I've been known to do a very decent impression of the Dormouse.'

He smiled and sat down next to her. 'When my mother first read the book to me, I was mortally afraid for weeks of giant arms reaching up through the chimneys, or so she told me.'

'How come she read it to you?'

'She was quite fond of Muggle literature,' he said shortly, face darkening.

And thereby hangs a tale, Hermione thought. And not a pleasant one, to judge by his forbidding expression. 'I'm not overly fond of fish,' she said, 'so I'm afraid you won't find any salmon. But I tried to make up for it with these miniature crostini. Not quite English, but to quote you, there's not enough good food in this country for us to neglect all those foreign delicacies.'

'Besides, you said you had your own interpretation of tea,' he remarked with a sideways glance at her.

'So I said. But that's certainly not limited to serving crostini. Kissing, for example, ought to be included in any afternoon tea worth its name.' She'd spent some time modifying the couch until it was just the right size – she'd tried it out earlier in the day with Severus, and their appraisal had been unanimous. She'd positioned Lucius exactly where she wanted him: very close to the armrest, with enough room left for him to recline. His look became hungry when Hermione took away his cup and saucer and gave him a gentle push, so that he was half-lying against the armrest. 'Or do you have any objections to that interpretation,' she asked, straddling him.

Hermione hadn't quite expected Lucius to be putty in her hands, but he was. Still astride him, she unbuttoned his waistcoat and then his shirt and let her hands roam over the skin she'd uncovered. It was white, soft and hairless. The grip of his hands on her waist tightened as she playfully rubbed herself against his crotch.

'Don't, please,' he murmured. 'I don't particularly fancy coming in my trousers. It's horribly undignified.'

'As I see it' – Hermione obligingly lifted herself a little – 'sex is never what you might call dignified. A friend of mine once said that sex is like risotto: the more disgusting it looks, the better it is.'

Lucius snorted. 'An interesting point of view.'

'Yes, isn't it.'

They continued to kiss, while Hermione methodically peeled off Lucius's jacket and waistcoat, and undid his cufflinks.

'And you would really have used this against me,' Hermione said conversationally, while careful to pin down his wrists and upper body with all her weight, 'and pressured me into obtaining a reduction of your parole, by making me choose between betraying my professional ethos and Severus being apprised of today's rendezvous?'

He made a feeble attempt at protest but was silenced by the expression on her face. 'I didn't know you very well,' he finally snapped.

'Would that be your way to justify what you'd planned?'

'No, it… You're making a fool of me!' he burst out.

Hermione shook her head. 'No, Lucius. I'm doing you a favour. I am, to use a rather trite expression, saving you from yourself. Do you have any idea' – she squeezed his wrists as hard as she could – 'how much you hurt Severus when you called in his debt?'

Lucius eyes narrowed. 'How on earth could you…'

'How could I know? Severus couldn't have told me, could he? Am I maybe a Legilimens?' She bent down and kissed him, gently, on the lips. 'No, and no. I can't tell you how, but we, the Ministry that is, have found a way to monitor those we need to keep under surveillance. That's how I found out. And I can't say I liked what I saw and heard.'

Trying to free himself, he looked away. 'I'll be taking my leave then,' he said, in a vain attempt at clothing himself in the shreds of his dignity.

'That's certainly not what you'll be doing. Don't struggle, or I'll cast a body bind on you, although I'd rather not. Will you be good?' He nodded silently, and she released his wrists. Her wand was in its special holster hidden under her right sleeve, and she'd be able to immobilize him faster than he could throw her off or reach his own wand, which she'd had the foresight to put on the table when she opened his cuffs. 'Lucius,' she said, when his breathing had somewhat calmed down, 'I don't want you to leave now. Call me patronizing, but I don't think it would do you any good. You are a double-crossing, mean, sneaky bastard, and for once you'll have to hear it from somebody who doesn't mean it as a compliment. You planned to trick me into breaking the rules of my profession, then threaten that you'd talk – the way you built that one up, I must say, was a masterpiece – and by that threat, get me to commit an even worse betrayal. Now, I honestly don't believe you'd have continued forever to blackmail me for sex once you'd got your freedom, but isn't it bad enough as it is? Why do you have to be such an egoistical, self-serving, ruthless son of a bitch? If sparingly used, those qualities are quite admirable, but why use them against the two people who stand by you when nobody else would even think of touching you with a ten-foot pole?'

Lucius swallowed. 'I want my freedom.'

'Then why not just talk to me about it? Not in riddles and hints and roundabout ways – you're such a clever wizard, Lucius, but sometimes you're too clever for your own good. There are times, and this is something you ought to give some serious thought to, when scheming and plotting and cunning gets you absolutely nowhere.' She leaned forward to bite his earlobe. 'So at least tell me now. What is it about your precious freedom? What exactly is it you want?'

'It's…' He sighed and took both her hands in his. Gently but firmly, she withdrew her right and covered his fingers with it. Lucius's eyes lit up, and he grinned. 'You are indeed a formidable witch, Hermione. Never let your guard slip completely; if you do, even an old lion would stand a chance at a breakfast.'

'For now, I think it's better if I'm a bit paranoid. You're a powerful wizard, Lucius, make no mistake about that. And you do feel I've humiliated you, don't you?'

'I feel like an idiot, but with you on top of me, it's hard to wish it hadn't happened.' He lifted his hips and rubbed against her.

'Don't try to distract me,' she said sternly. 'I have something to offer you, and I'd like you to think about it. Think, as in with your brain, Lucius, that would be the amorphous mass that left your head twenty minutes ago and glibbered south.'

He relaxed and contemplated her for a while. 'It's the strangest thing,' he finally said, 'but you seem to be growing on me. I really quite like you, unexpected though it is.'

'I'm not growing but sitting on you, and I must say I rather feel the same, only a lot more unexpectedly. For one, you are really quite good-looking, and you may be a bastard, but a clever bastard, and I happen to like clever people.'

'You were saying something about an offer?'

'Yes. I talked to the Minister this morning, and I managed to convince him that your case is somewhat special. So he consented to handling it in a rather, let us say, unorthodox manner: If you agree to spend the next two years under Severus's and my supervision, your parole would end instantly. No more monitoring, no more reporting back to the Ministry. But you'd have to accept our guidance.'

'Does Severus know about all this?'

'Of course he does. I may be a bit bossy, but I'm certainly able to come to a joint decision with the man I love.'

'Would there be sex?'

Hermione laughed out loud. 'That, although the Minister certainly didn't intend it that way, would be one of the perks of this arrangement. Severus told me you'd shared in the past, and I must say the thought is… intriguing. He let me see some of the racier memories.'

'Karen Sinclair?'

'If that's the redhead with the enormous tits, yes.'

'That's the one. Did you' – he wriggled against her – 'like what you saw?'

'Don't be impertinent! And, just so you're fully aware of the terms of the deal, there's one rule that won't be waived: No sex à deux for you and me, and none for you and Severus.'

'A rule that won't be waived,' Lucius said dreamily. 'I daresay we have a deal. I do like a challenge after all.'


	16. Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN – TWO DAYS LATER, AT HERMIONE'S FLAT

The three were sitting, side by side, in Hermione's bed, their backs comfortably supported by the headboard. Severus and Hermione had wordlessly agreed to let Lucius sit between them, for they felt he needed the comfort and warmth. He'd understood, more or less, that he wasn't the centre of the universe, but that didn't mean he couldn't be the centre here. At least for a while.

Hermione lit a cigarette, handed it to Severus and lit another one for herself. 'That was bloody fantastic,' she said.

Lucius grinned. 'What did you expect?' An impatient wave of his hand chased wisps of smoke towards the window. 'Why on earth are you smoking this stuff? There are better and far more pleasant ways to kill oneself, if that's what you want.'

'In homeopathic doses,' Severus remarked, 'nicotine has a rather beneficial effect.'

'Ron used to hate it when I smoked,' Hermione added.

Lucius made a sound somewhere between surprise and resignation. 'Well,' he said, 'I guess it's all right then.'

A secret little smile playing around her lips, Hermione patted his arm. 'Thank you, dear.' She followed the greyish-blue smoke ghosts with her eyes, frowning at a failed attempt at a smoke ring. 'I wish I could blow-'

'You can, sweet, you can,' Lucius interrupted her.

'Don't be such a pig, Lucius.' She glared, though not very convincingly. 'Why do you always have to think of sex?'

'I beg your pardon?' He sat up a little straighter and raised his chin, the curtain of his hair gliding back over his shoulders. 'I'm sitting in a bed, naked, with you and Severus – what else would there be to think of?'

'If you freed your spirit of such worldly concerns,' Severus said reprovingly, 'and let it rise towards the stars…'

'Speaking of rising,' Lucius said with a knowing look to his right, at the point where Severus's lower belly met the blanket. 'And there's nothing spiritual about that.' His left hand vanished under the covers, and Hermione drew in a sharp breath. 'I have no idea how I'm going to survive the next two years, but the lady is clearly ready for another round.'

Hermione snorted and let her hand wander up Lucius's thigh. 'You call it The Lady?'

There was a short bed-quake, until they'd coordinated various limbs, heads and other body parts. 'I certainly don't,' Lucius retorted, a little later and a good deal more squeakily than he'd intended. 'Really, with all this disrespect going on, I'm not quite sure whether I'm in heaven or hell.'

Severus, behind him, tilted his pelvis fractionally but decisively, and Hermione's head moved southwards.

'Ye Gods!' Lucius exclaimed.

'That clinches it,' Severus said, a little breathlessly.

'He's in heaven,' Hermione completed his sentence, sounding a bit like Demosthenes must have when he practised with the marbles in his mouth, only minus the noise of the Aegean Sea roaring against the coast.

'Oh, yes,' Lucius breathed, and that was the last he said for a while.

Later, when they'd lit the candles and Severus had excused himself to answer the call of nature, Hermione gently traced the scars on Lucius's body. Sated as he was, he let her do it and merely sighed contentedly when she touched a sensitive spot. 'Lucius,' she said into the silence, 'why don't you tell me who did this to you?'

He didn't move and merely opened his eyes. 'I believe I already explained my reasons.'

'Yes, you did, and I'm not saying they aren't good reasons. But… wouldn't you like to see those people punished?'

His chest rose and fell in a deep sigh. 'What does punishment achieve, if there's no sense of guilt?'

'Does that mean' – she gently kissed the corner of his mouth – 'that you feel guilty about what you've done?' She fleetingly wondered why Severus wasn't coming back, but maybe he'd overheard their words and decided he'd give them a bit of time.

'Guilty…' Lucius turned his head so he could look at her. 'I'd rather say I regret certain actions. There are things I wouldn't do again if I could go back and change them.'

'For example?'

'Completely fucking up the mission to the Department of Mysteries, for example.'

'That,' Hermione said, 'doesn't suggest a lot of moral improvement on your part.'

'Did I ever claim to have improved? I hardly believe you let me off ten years early because you thought I'd become a better man in that hell.'

'So what have you become?'

'Old.' He gave her a lopsided smile. 'Jaded, and tired, and… well, I suppose I've come to realize that I'm not untouchable – I used to believe that, you know? With my money and my political influence… The awareness that they can get me if they really put their mind to it has probably achieved much the same result guilt or contrition would have accomplished.'

'You mean you won't be hatching any more plans to overthrow the government and enslave ninety percent of the population?'

'Let us say' – he rolled over so that his body half covered hers – 'I'll be thinking about it a lot more carefully. And in case I should feel compelled to aim for world domination, I'll certainly do it for myself and not for some crazy reptilian parvenu.'

'Good enough for me,' Hermione said, grinning and biting her lip in an effort to subdue the sudden flare of lust as Lucius's thigh slid between hers. 'I think we ought to wait for Severus, shouldn't we?'

'He's here,' Lucius breathed into her ear, making her shiver. 'Didn't you feel him enter the room?'

'Severus?' Hermione flinched when she heard him chuckle right next to her.

'I am indeed here. You said I could watch, if I remember correctly.'

Her arousal, which had flagged briefly, spiked up again, and she bucked against Lucius's thigh. 'Are you sure you don't mind?'

'Oh yes. I might even' – an invisible finger stroked along her arm – 'join in at some point. Right now I'm perfectly happy just watching you. Although…' He laughed at Hermione's gasp, when suddenly Lucius became invisible as well. 'I think it's even more interesting like this. A fascinating variation on the blindfold theme, don't you think?'

'Very fas-' She felt Lucius slide downwards, his hair tickling and whispering over her skin, and decided that she didn't really want to talk. And then she couldn't talk, because she was too busy whimpering and moaning.

'That,' Lucius muttered when he could again use his tongue to speak, 'was delicious. Although I'm not sure it's what the Minister was thinking of when he entrusted me to your, erm, guidance.' He moved back into his former position and slid a hand under Hermione's head. 'Or indeed this… Severus, do you have any idea how difficult it is to aim with an invisible cock?'

'Really?' The mattress dipped under another invisible weight. 'I'll show you how – ouch!'

'That was my hipbone,' Lucius said helpfully. 'What exactly did you mean to show me? How difficult it is when the target is invisible, too?'

Hermione cleared her throat. 'I'm still here, you know. Could you please get on with it? Use your hand, for heaven's sake!'

'I wouldn't want to cheat,' Lucius said virtuously.

'And I don't want to be poked – oh!'

'Got it,' Lucius panted. 'Oh… Oh, yes!'

'Me too.' Severus sounded smug, if slightly breathless. 'Did you just say you didn't want to cheat?'

'Probably due… to… your positive… influence… on my character!'

'After only two days,' Hermione gasped. 'Must be the… oh yes! The sex! Yes!'

'Yes!'

'Yes! Yes!'

Given their enthusiastic, unanimous confirmation of the character-building effects of sex, they all agreed afterwards, visible again, and quite dishevelled and sweaty, what choice did they have but to continue – after all, they only had two years to make a Better Man of Lucius Malfoy.


	17. Chapter 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – TWO WEEKS LATER, AT MALFOY MANOR

'Where's your master?' Severus asked Dorky the House Elf, who was staring up at him with wide green eyes.

'Dorky doesn't know, Mister Snape. The Master goes out after breakfast and doesn't come back.'

'Out?' Severus frowned. 'What do you mean by "out"? Where did he go?'

'Master says he goes for a walk. But he doesn't put on his warm cloak, and he doesn't come back for hours!'

Hermione had proposed an outing to Muggle London for that afternoon – Lucius had never been to the British Museum, so she'd claimed it was going to be an educational trip, and since he stubbornly refused to be seen in public in the wizarding world, going Muggle seemed like the only way to make him spend some time in the company of human beings other than Severus or Hermione.

They'd agreed to meet at 2 p.m. at Severus's house. When Lucius still hadn't shown up at five, they'd both begun to worry. An hour and a few chewed nails later, Hermione had asked Severus to Apparate to the Manor and make sure everything was all right. Severus had assumed that Lucius had simply changed is mind – he hadn't been too happy with the idea in the first place – but Dorky's words upset him more than he cared to let the elf see. He briefly pondered whether he ought to inform Hermione, but then decided that he'd rather try and find Lucius first. Since it was dark already, locating him might take some time.

'Bring me the Master's cloak,' he ordered the elf. 'And while you're at it, get me a bottle of brandy, too.' He shrunk both items under the elf's anxious stare, wrapped his scarf more tightly around his neck and stepped out into the cold.

It had started to rain, and a strong wind was bowing steadily from the North. With the sky being covered by a thick layer of clouds, the darkness was almost absolute. Severus lit his wand and told himself to calm down. Chances were that Lucius had wandered off to one of his favourite haunts; the grounds were vast, so starting with the obvious places was probably a good idea. If he couldn't find Lucius there, he'd have to call Hermione and the House Elves anyway. Cold as it was, they'd have to get to Lucius as soon as possible, otherwise the stupid sod might die from exposure – the fact that he'd refused his cloak didn't encourage Severus to hope that he might at least have cast a warming spell.

He went down to the lake first, both because he hoped the brisk walk would help him get his thoughts in order, and because he was anxious to lay his worst fears to rest. He felt torn between the rational part of his mind, which kept telling him that, if Lucius had meant to commit suicide, he would certainly have chosen a more dignified way of dying and certainly not one that left his hair in disarray, and the mental image of a pale, bluish face drifting in dark waters, surrounded by a halo of white-blond hair.

After he'd rounded the lake once, carefully peering under shrubs and behind trees, Severus directed his wand at the surface and pronounced, _'Accio_ Lucius!' When no corpse rose from the depths, he heaved a sigh of relief. 'So where are you, you bloody idiot?' he murmured to himself, fished the bottle out of his pocket, un-shrunk it and took a deep gulp. The warmth he felt in his stomach helped him calm down, and he decided that the next place he ought to look for Lucius was the garden shed.

The name was a little misleading, because the building was neither in a garden – it stood hidden beneath a copse of chestnut trees about a mile from the Manor – nor was it, strictly speaking, a shed. It was a kind of summer house, at a distance of maybe 200 yards from the lake. Severus remembered it well – he and Lucius had spent whole days at the lake during the summer holidays following his second year at Hogwarts. They'd lazed away the hours swimming, reading and flying… Lunch had been brought out to them and served in the garden shed, and occasionally Lucius's parents had joined them, but mostly they' been left to their own devices and sometimes also been allowed to sleep in the shed.

Lost in his memories, Severus had reached the house and felt his shoulders sag in relief, when he saw light shine through one of the windows. Now that he knew Lucius was safe, his anxiety gave way to anger and exasperation. What was he to do? Of course, he could simply walk away, sure in the knowledge that Lucius's life wasn't in immediate danger. Given Lucius's usual reaction to anything even remotely like concern for his person, that seemed like a very attractive option. Then again, they'd agreed to spend the afternoon together, and pretending he and Hermione simply hadn't noticed that Lucius had failed to show up was wrong on many levels. Severus sighed and mentally braced himself. There was nothing for it. He'd have to talk to his friend – at least he had a bottle of brandy. If Lucius proved to be particularly obnoxious, he could still hit him over the head with it.

The light Severus had seen was shed by a single candle, which had been positioned right at the centre of the table. Lucius was stretched out on one of the wooden cots, from which the mattresses had long been removed, his head pillowed on a folded blanket. He was fast asleep.

Trying to ignore the frisson of fondness he felt at the sight, Severus took the cloak out of his pocket, restored it to its original size and put a warming charm on it before spreading it over the sleeping wizard. Lucius twitched and murmured, but didn't wake up. He was lying on his back, and Severus, who'd noiselessly summoned a chair, bent forward to smooth back a strand of hair from the pale forehead. Lucius's eyes flew open, and Severus had to bite down hard on his lip to suppress a gasp, when the other wizard raised his hands to protect his face.

'It's only me,' he said soothingly. When the vein on Lucius's throat had stopped jumping madly, he added, 'What are you doing out here?'

'Sleeping,' Lucius replied grumpily, visibly uncomfortable in his vulnerable position.

'I'd gathered as much. Why not sleep in your own bed?'

'Go away,' was all the answer he got.

'I don't think I will. We had plans for today, I suppose you haven't forgotten that, and I'd like to know why you didn't even deign to tell us you weren't coming.'

'None of your business,' Lucius muttered, turning his face towards the wall.

'Even if I weren't your friend, Lucius, it would still be my business. I'm responsible for you, as is Hermione. You can't just not show up and expect you won't have to explain it. I was worried,' he added for good measure, since Lucius's face was already dark with anger.

'I'm deeply touched. Now you've made sure I'm alive and haven't gathered a crowd of Death Eaters around me, bugger off.'

Severus sighed. 'I went to the lake first, to _Accio_ your dead body.'

'Oh, sorry. Forgive me. If only I'd known, I would of course have obliged you.'

'Lucius, this isn't funny. I was… we were genuinely concerned you'd harmed yourself.'

'Others have harmed me more than enough,' Lucius snapped bitterly, 'There's nothing much I could do to myself to make it worse.'

There was a short silence, then Severus said, 'Have we done the wrong thing? Would you prefer going back to the terms of your parole as it was?' Lucius mutely shook his head. 'Then what? Tell me, Lucius.'

Finally, Lucius turned back his head and met Severus's look. 'I don't think you'll understand.'

'Azkaban?' Severus sighed and took Lucius's hand. He was surprised when it wasn't withdrawn but remained, cold and a little unsteady, between his fingers. 'I'm not sure I can. What I can understand is loneliness. Humiliation, too, both physical and spiritual. I think I understand fear, the kind that makes you afraid of the one thing you crave most, which is sleep. I understand what it means to have lost everything, so that you can't see a single reason to go on living. I understand hatred. Envy, too, and jealousy. I know what it's like to be marginalized, to lose any hope of belonging ever again.'

A deep, shuddering sigh. 'Yes, I suppose you do.'

'I'm aware,' Severus continued cautiously, 'that Azkaban is all that rolled into one, and ten times worse. I won't tell you that I know how you're feeling, because I don't. You'd accepted that you were going to die in there, hadn't you?'

'Accepted…' His voice was a little shaky, and Lucius cleared his throat. 'I wouldn't go as far as that. I just couldn't… imagine life anymore. Or that anything was ever going to change. Everything had become a distant memory – such things as pleasure, you know. Being free of pain, things like that.'

Without letting go of Lucius's hand, Severus bent down and kissed him. 'Curling up on a wooden cot in the middle of the woods doesn't seem like the best way to reacquaint yourself with everything the world has to offer you.'

Breath quickening, Lucius grasped Severus's neck and pulled him further down to deepen the kiss. 'There was a time,' he breathed, 'when I took what I wanted, not what was offered.'

'You seem to have problems distinguishing charity from what is freely given.' Severus drew his wand to enlarge the cot and then stretched out next to Lucius. 'I assure you, for all it's worth, that what Hermione and I are offering you is not charity.'

'And if I wanted to have sex with you, here and now?'

'I'd say no. But' – he took Lucius's jaw in a firm grip and forced him to look at him – 'not because I don't want to fuck you, Lucius. I'd refuse because I don't want to be used. Not anymore, by anybody.'

Lucius's eyes narrowed. 'How dare you accuse me of wanting to use you?'

'Because that's exactly what you'd be doing. We established a rule, right at the beginning – no sex for you and me or you and Hermione alone. You refuse to accept that rule, and by trying to, let us say, seduce me, you mean to prove to yourself that rules don't exist for you. But they do, and you'll have to come to terms with it. Speaking of rules, isn't it much more fun playing by them and using them to get what you want?'

Finally free of Severus's grip, Lucius fell back into his prone position and stared at the ceiling. 'It sounds vaguely amusing, yes, but mostly very tedious.'

'Hmm… I'm not so sure. We could go home now, to my place I mean, and there we could have sex, with Hermione watching. That' – he propped himself up on one elbow – 'doesn't sound tedious at all, does it?' His hand stroked Lucius's thigh. 'Not that good sex is likely to solve all your problems, but it would be a start.'

'You wouldn't disillusion her?'

'I wouldn't dream of it.'

'And she'd be naked?'

'Well, that would rather be the point, wouldn't it?'

Lucius smiled and closed his eyes. 'I'll think about it.'

'Don't take too long.'

'I won't. Severus,' he said, 'you won't tell her?'

'About you sulking in the garden shed? No, I don't see why I should.'

'Good. Do you still have those lovely briefs? The dark green silk ones?'

'I'll see what I can do.' Severus got up from the cot and straightened his robes. 'We'll be expecting you shortly. Say, half an hour?'

'I might be five minutes late.'

Severus rolled his eyes and Disapparated.


	18. Chapter 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – THREE WEEKS LATER, AT GODRIC'S HOLLOW

'You're late!' Molly Weasley said reprovingly, as she opened the door to Hermione.

Hermione raised an eyebrow. 'The baby's still here, isn't it? So how could I be late?'

Sarcasm had never worked on Molly. 'Everybody has already arrived, you're the last!'

'Somebody has to be, Molly. And now kindly let me in, it's bloody freezing out here, and I don't want to catch cold.'

Molly sniffed, as she always did when she had no idea what to say but couldn't resort to cuffing the person round the ear, and stepped back to let Hermione enter the house. 'We haven't seen much of you lately.'

Typical, Hermione thought. You fought her off at one end, and she immediately started sniffing around for another weakness she could dig her claws into. 'I've been busy,' she said, taking off her cloak and hanging it next to the bulge of garments the other visitors had left in the entrance room.

'I daresay everybody is,' Molly replied, in a tone of voice suggesting that Law Enforcement was nothing compared to Housekeeping at The Burrow. 'But I suppose you don't have to work every Sunday, so I don't really understand why you never made an appearance at our family lunches.'

Sundays… Sundays were much too good to be wasted on Weasley family lunches. Sundays were to be spent with Severus, sometimes at his place, sometimes at hers, and sometimes at Malfoy Manor. Most of the time there was sex involved, but not always. Last Sunday, for example, all three of them had stayed at Severus's house, mostly in the basement, trying to locate the error in a new formula he'd developed. They'd argued, and almost thrown books at one another's heads, and there'd been three explosions… She loved Sundays, and wasn't going to give up even one of them to Molly Weasley. 'I'm not family, Molly,' she said, as kindly as she could. 'Ron has been dead for more than three months, I have to move on.'

Molly looked at her sharply. 'Move on? What do you mean by "move on"? You were married ten years, how could you move on?' Her voice was getting a little shrill.

'I'm not even thirty yet, you can't very well expect me to devote my life to Ron's memory.'

'You'll never find anybody like him!'

Since these words were open to very different interpretations, Hermione merely replied, 'No, I probably won't.'

'Harry told me he saw you a few times with Snape.' Molly regarded her with shrewd eyes.

'Did he indeed?' Hermione squeezed past the other woman and made her way towards the living room, from where the sound of voices and laughter indicated that a lot of people were having a lot more fun than she was right now.

A small explosion and a puff of violently purple smoke made her reach for her wand instinctively, but then she saw that everybody was standing together in a tight group and grinning and waving as if their lives depended on it. Only a photo then, probably one of many, to commemorate the birth of Harry and Ginny's first child.

Arthur spotted her and waved her over. 'Come here! Charlie, now you take a picture of us all – George, let Charlie have the camera now!'

Was it the war and the loss of two of their boys, Hermione mused on her way over to the group, or was it just the way they were? George was well over thirty now, and Charlie almost forty, and still it was Do This and Don't Do That and You Must and You Mustn't. Usually Arthur was just another child for Molly to boss around, but today he obviously felt he was the patriarch, what with his only daughter's first child being born. They hadn't made such a fuss over Bill and Fleur's first baby, which had been their first grandchild after all, and Hermione found that rather unfair, even though she didn't particularly like Fleur.

'Hi pretty,' George said, positioning himself next to her and loping a gangly arm around her shoulders. 'Has mum already lectured you?'

Charlie was still fumbling with the camera, so having to smile instead of talk wasn't an option yet. Besides, she liked George. 'She did, she did.'

'You going out with old Dungeon Bat, then?'

Exasperated, Hermione elbowed him in the ribs. 'Why is everybody so interested in what I'm doing and who I'm going out with?'

He grinned down at her. 'We like you.'

'I'm not so sure any of you would still like me, if I really was going out with Severus.'

'I can't speak for the others, but I certainly would. And if you're thinking of mum – she'd never forgive you anyway, if you remarried, except maybe if it was me. Or Percy.' He snorted. 'But I guess you've had quite enough of Weasley husbands.'

Hermione opened her mouth to reply, but Charlie shouted 'Smile!', and so she had to smile and wave. Then Arthur took her arm and steered her towards the stairs and up to the bedroom where Ginny, tired but proud, was propped up against a mountain of cushions with baby Lily sleeping the sleep of the just next to her.

'Don't let anybody ever talk you into having a baby,' she said, when Arthur had left, and Hermione had pulled up a chair and sat down. 'Giving birth is worse than Crucio. I said to Harry…' She giggled. 'Mum was so full of righteous indignation I thought she'd box my ears, never mind I was in labour.'

Hermione grinned. 'I gather you were being unladylike and not a Good Wife?'

'I told him that, if he ever dared to get his cock near me again, I'd bite it off and give it to the dog.'

'You don't have a dog.'

'That's what Harry said, too, but mum wasn't really able to see the funny side.' Ginny looked down at the baby. 'But she's quite pretty, isn't she?'

'She's got a lot of hair,' Hermione said diplomatically. 'I wonder if it's going to stay black, or if she'll be a redhead.'

'Mum says – oh, bugger mum. Are you really going out with Snape?'

Hermione rolled her eyes. 'You're the third person to ask me that question within the last ten minutes.'

'Well, are you?'

'Yes. Yes, I'm going out with Severus, and not just going out, if you must know.'

Ginny frowned at her. 'Why haven't you told us?'

'That's a bit of a redundant question, isn't it? Ron has only been dead a little over three months – I didn't think anybody would react too favourably to me starting another relationship so soon afterwards.'

'I guess you didn't know then that mum and dad were the only family members Ron hadn't told you were going to get a divorce.'

'What?' The baby made a small moaning sound and smacked its lips, but didn't wake up. 'What?' Hermione repeated, more quietly. 'I can't believe – why did none of you ever mention it?'

'We mostly met at Sunday lunches, and that wouldn't have been the right time or place, don't you think?'

'No. No, you're right, it probably wouldn't.' Hermione shook her head, still incredulous. 'How do you feel about me, then? Do you hate me?'

'Why on earth should I hate you?' Ginny took Hermione's hand. 'I'd hate you if you'd killed him, but he died, and if he hadn't died' – now there were tears in her eyes – 'If he hadn't died,' she repeated, 'you'd be divorced by now. I did love Ron, but that doesn't mean I thought he was perfect. Mum does, but I certainly didn't. And I know you well enough, I think, to understand why it couldn't have worked out between the two of you.'

'And Severus? How do you feel about Severus and me being a couple?'

Ginny shrugged. 'I think he's a good person. I mean, when it was all over, ten years ago, and we learned the truth about him… I understood how much he'd risked to keep us safe. I don't think he's handsome, and I can't imagine that he's an easy person to live with, but that's your problem. But he's certainly not in any way an objectionable choice.'

'We don't live together,' Hermione said, smiling, 'and I doubt we ever will, even if we should ever marry. We can afford two separate households, and whenever we feel like it, we do spend a few days together, but there are times… We're both hard workers, and at times we get extremely grumpy and tetchy.'

'Well,' Ginny said reasonably, 'if you have children, you'll have to live together.'

'Didn't you just advise me never to give birth?'

Ginny grinned. 'Yeah, but… Now that she's here, and the healing potion has done its job…'

'You're a shining example of consistency, Ginny.' She patted the redhead's hand. 'But I'm glad, really very, very glad you're not judging me. What about Harry, by the way? What does he think about the whole matter?'

'He's… I'm so happy Lily's finally arrived, because I'm sure she'll manage to drag him out of his grief. You were right, Hermione, it's the guilt that makes it so difficult for him. I suppose he envies you, because you're able to get on with your life, while he just can't seem to find a way out. Therefore I'd say his feelings are… ambiguous. Rationally he knows you're doing the right thing, but in his heart he doesn't understand how and why you're moving on.'

'Poor Harry.' Hermione bit her lip. 'Do you think… Do you think I ought to have tried harder?'

Ginny wagged her head. 'No,' she finally said. 'And I'm not saying this to make you feel better. He was about to Floo you a hundred times, and I encouraged him to do it – you're such a rational, sensible person, I was sure talking to you would've done him a world of good. But he never did. He always put the Floo powder back on the mantelpiece and went off to look at old photos.'

'I had no idea!' Hermione said, her throat tight. 'I'm so sorry, it must have been difficult, I mean for you… How did you cope?'

'I know he loves me,' Ginny said simply, 'And I saw his face whenever he touched my belly and Lily kicked him. I knew he'd come round the moment she was born.'

'And do you think he has?'

'Oh, yes. I threw mum out, because he was holding Lily and crying so hard… Poor baby, he did squeeze her, but then I thought she'd already been squeezed a lot more and survived, so it sure wouldn't hurt. And when he'd finished crying, he gave her back to me, and his eyes were bright – you know Harry, his eyes go all dull when he's unhappy, and they shine like mad when he's happy, and he said he'd just go and fly for a bit. He hadn't touched his broomstick since the day Ron died, so I knew he was definitely on the mend.'

Hermione sat silent for a while, her head in her hands. 'I think,' she finally said, raising her head to look at Ginny, 'that we'll have to, well, get them together. I don't want to have to choose between you and Severus, and the way things are going now, I feel as if I've been neglecting you and Harry. I don't want to feel that way, I don't want to feel guilty. I love him, and I love you – it has to be possible! I mean,' she continued after a pause, 'I'm not naïve enough to believe they'll be friends, but an evening together, all of us, every now and then – that's not too much to wish for, is it?'

'Why don't you bring him to the namesgiving? Everybody's bound to be beside themselves with happiness and pride, and the place will be swarming with reporters, so even mum won't risk a scandal.'

Hermione nodded slowly. 'That seems like an excellent idea. I'll talk to him.' She leaned over to kiss Ginny's cheek. 'Thanks, Gin. You're a friend, you truly are. Shouldn't you get some sleep now? You're looking very tired.'

She stayed until Ginny was breathing deeply and regularly, then picked up Lily and put her in the crib, and silently left the room.


	19. Chapter 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN – TWO MONTHS LATER, AT SEVERUS SNAPE'S HOUSE

'Lucius,' Severus said, 'This isn't really… Well, come in.'

'This isn't really what?' Lucius stepped over the threshold and sniffed. 'Mmh, that smells marvellous. Are you expecting guests?'

'Yes, Potter and his wife are coming to dinner. That's why I meant to say that this isn't the best of times.'

Hermione joined them in the entrance. She was wearing an apron over a pair of old jeans and a sweatshirt that had probably been white before she started cooking. 'Who's there – oh, Lucius. Do you mind sitting in the kitchen while we're cooking? Harry and Ginny are due in an hour, and we can't really interrupt now.'

Lucius shrugged and followed them into the kitchen, where he accepted a chair and a glass of wine. He didn't look happy. 'I never have guests,' he said, staring into his glass.

Hermione, who was peeling mushrooms and cutting them into thin slices, gave him a sharp look. 'Are you being maudlin, Lucius?'

'I think I have every right to be maudlin.' He gestured at the work surface, where vegetables, bottles, cooking implements and a bunch of flowers formed a rather disorganized still life. 'You're having fun, and inviting guests…'

'You're aware, aren't you,' Severus said, 'that it's Potter and his wife coming to dinner. Not exactly my idea of having fun.'

Lucius shrugged and took a sip of his wine in a manner that somehow managed to convey obstinacy. He didn't respond either and merely watched Hermione work her way through the mushrooms.

After five minutes of silence, Hermione sighed and put down her knife. 'Can you finish on your own?' she asked Severus, who nodded and handed her the wine bottle and her glass. 'Come on, Lucius. Let's go to the living room and talk.'

'There's no need to treat me like a toddler,' Lucius snapped, but rose obediently when she took his hand, and followed her out of the kitchen.

When she'd closed the door behind them, Hermione rose on tiptoes and kissed him. 'Is that better? I don't usually kiss toddlers that way.'

'Minx,' was all he said.

The living room, which doubled as dining room, was ready for the visitors, and a shadow passed over Lucius's face, when he looked at the table. Hermione resolutely steered him towards the fireplace, pushed him into an armchair and unceremoniously made herself comfortable on his knees. 'You're unhappy, aren't you?'

'I feel lost,' he responded with unusual candour.

'Is it because you feel de trop, what with Severus and me being together?'

He flinched away from her caressing hand and looked into the fire. 'Sometimes. But mostly I'm just bored out of my mind. I can't just read and go for walks and tell myself that I'm lucky to have what I have. And don't' – he glared at her, when she was about to say something – 'don't you dare suggest I need a hobby.'

'That wasn't what I was going to say. You've always been an active kind of person, Lucius, I'm well aware that a hobby can't replace that. And of course I know that our arrangement can't replace a family of your own, because I strongly suspect that you're missing that, too, aren't you?'

'Not the one I used to have,' he bit out.

'No, of course not. I meant generally speaking – you liked being a paterfamilias, knowing you had an heir who'd take over, that sort of thing. Why don't you remarry?'

'Hermione, you're the cleverest witch I know, but sometimes you can be astonishingly stupid. I'm a convicted Death Eater – maybe they'd marry me for the money, but that's certainly not what I want.'

She cocked her head and scrutinized him. 'I think you're being too pessimistic here. Do you think I'm interested in your money?'

'Of course not, but-'

'But me no buts. What I'm trying to make you understand is that, if there's one woman who genuinely likes you for what you are, why shouldn't there be another? The problem is that you don't meet any women, because you never leave your bloody big manor, except if Severus and I drag you out. And even then you refuse to go anywhere public.'

'I've had enough humiliation to last me a lifetime. I don't need any more of that, thank you very much.'

Hermione stroked his cheek; this time he didn't flinch, but neither did he look at her. 'Lucius, you mustn't… Please, stop beating yourself up. It doesn't help, and it's just a waste of time.' She took a sip of wine. 'Maybe you ought to start plotting a bit, make plans to take over the world, hm? You could start by writing to the Minister, asking for a full pardon, so you'd be able to access all your frozen accounts and take back the reins of business. You practically own the Chudley Cannons, for heaven's sake, you own the biggest building company in England and, as far as I know, you own Broomstix Ltd., not to mention most of the forests supplying the wood.'

'He'll never grant me a full pardon.'

'How can you be so sure unless you try? Do you think I wouldn't help you? Tell you what, Lucius, I'll try to convince Harry to put in a word for you – there's a lot of good you could do with all that money. Just think of St. Mungo's, they're always short of budget and staff, or wizarding education. It's time somebody did something about post-N.E.W.T.s education, that's a complete mess, and nobody seems to care.'

Lucius sighed. 'All that sounds very… tempting, but-'

'Stop saying but, Lucius. Do something. The Minister won't call at Malfoy Manor, offering you your pardon. You want your life back, fight for it! It's been over ten years – people do forget, Lucius. Give them jobs, give them money, and you'll see how quick they'll be to accept you back into society. Severus thinks, and I think too, that it might be better if you waited a bit longer, but if it makes you so miserable, I think we ought to give it a try now, don't you agree?'

'You're being very bossy,' he said, but he was smiling.

'You don't leave me any other choice. We'll have to find you a bossy wife, a struggling but basically bossy virgin, since you seem to like that so much.'

'I didn't say I liked it.'

'But you do, don't you?'

'I think I'll Apparate home and write that letter. Are you really going to ask Potter's help?'

'It's going to be hard work, but I will. The Aurors' department has been requesting new brooms for years, but there's never enough money. Besides, they'd really appreciate getting preferential treatment at St. Mungo's. And those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head.'

'You're very cunning for a Gryffindor.' He bent forward to smell her hair and flick his tongue over her earlobe. 'And now' – he put down his glass and rose, thus depositing her on her feet – 'I'll leave you to your dinner preparations. That letter won't write itself, and I just remembered that the Minister owes me both a favour and a rather substantial amount of galleons… I'll have to verify the latter with the goblins of course…' He fleetingly kissed her cheek and strode towards the door, muttering to himself. As far as Hermione could make out, he was mentally calculating the interest that had been accumulating for seventeen years.

'Is he gone?' Severus asked, when she rejoined him in the kitchen. 'He seemed very dejected – is he better now?'

'Much better. And now listen, because tonight is going to be a lot more difficult than we thought. When we've finished dinner, you'll have to distract Ginny, because I need to talk to Harry about Lucius.'

'Distract her? But how-'

'It doesn't matter. You'll have to think of something. You used to be a double agent, you can't have forgotten all your skills.'

'But I barely know her!'

'Never mind.' Hermione kissed the tip of his nose. 'Come to think of it, you might tell her how you managed to burn the duck, and how you quickly and efficiently threw together whatever we're going to eat tonight.'

Maybe Lucius was right, she thought while climbing the stairs, still giggling at Severus's expression of helpless fury when he'd looked at the burnt lump. Maybe she was a little bossy. Just a little bit. So what? She liked being in charge. And tonight, she'd start convincing Harry that pardoning Lucius might lead to a lot of good things. Then she'd have to talk to the Minister, and obviously also to some select members of the Wizengamot…

Age and experience had taught her that she couldn't save the world all by herself. But that was all right. All she wanted was to keep her world intact – a world that contained carbonized ducks, depressive ex-Death Eaters, Potions masters with Master Chef delusions and complicated friendships. It wasn't perfect, but it was hers.

THE END


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